Twitter, Facebook, blogs, text messaging, and other group and social sites are quickly rendering the MSM completely irrelevant (if it's one thing reporters hate, it's being irrelevant). Often by the time the networks have produced a segment, the story is so broadly distributed that the only thing left to do is report on how its being reported. Iran, Michael Jackson, Sanford, cap n trade, North Korea, the stimulus bill (did I just include Michael Jackson in that list?)...all broke by the written word and neither television nor radio can keep up. Who would've thought: the written word would kill the television? As I said before, like the government, the broadcast media has become so huge it cannot react, it's become bottlenecked, and it's choking itself to death.
Take the recent Iranian crisis and the roles of twitter, facebook, and the blogs...now apply this to September 11, 2001. Remember how we all sat by our tvs waiting hours for just a few kernels of news to trickle in from CNN and FNC? What if twitter was around back then?
- Tweets from the roof of Tower 2 as the building moaned and buckled;
- I love yous broadcast from the airliners just seconds before slamming into Tower 1;
- Reports from passengers on how low to the ground flight 77 was flying;
- Tweets from passengers on other flights still in the air wondering why they haven't landed yet;
- On the scene reporting from teachers in the school library as word of the attacks reached the President;
- Descriptions of the hijackers and their language twittered for the defense department analysis and instruction;
- Calls for action, vigilance, organization, demonstration and unity by we citizens (think Tea Party times 1,000,000) in the hours, days, weeks that followed.
How different would the past 8 years have played out? In a weird way, the indescribable, unreal atrocity of 9/11 would be crystal clear and oh so very real.
I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure how it's going to play out but it feels like we are witnessing something special: the maturation of the internet into a near perfect form of mass communication and the obsolescence of the current dominant form of news distribution. By making the world (in its broader sense) more virtual, we are making it more real. We understand better not because the information is more polished but because it is unfiltered. We base our decisions not on someone's manipulation of images but on our ability to read, comprehend, and critically think. We are supported and inspired by those who believe as we do and are willing to act on those beliefs
That and there's a ton of awesome porn available.
