Love it or hate it, Social Media have transformed the way we communicate. Facebook and platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, have given the average person the ability, for the first time, to publish his or her own ideas and thoughts in a public forum. No longer is news, opinion and advertising the sole domain of giant corporations companies. In this way, media has been democratized. Most significantly, Social Media provide an environment where one can easily find his or her “tribe” – other people with shared interests, passions, and desires, whether they be political, cultural, religious, etc. The result of this can be of great benefit, or of great danger, to the global community.

1. Integral Salon Sag Harbor, NY Dec. 18, 2014
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Love it or hate it, Social Media have transformed the way we communicate. Facebook
and platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, have given the average person
the ability, for the first time, to publish his or her own ideas and thoughts in a public
forum. No longer is news, opinion and advertising the sole domain of giant corporations
companies. In this way, media has been democratized.
!
Most significantly, Social Media provide an environment where one can easily find his or
her “tribe” – other people with shared interests, passions, and desires, whether they be
political, cultural, religious, etc. The result of this can be of great benefit, or of great
danger, to the global community.
!
!
Betsy Kent
President
Be Visible Associates

2. Social media are computer-mediated tools
that allow people to create, share or exchange
information, ideas, and pictures/videos
in virtual communities and networks. !
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They depend on mobile and web-based
technologies to create highly interactive
platforms through which individuals and
communities share, co-create, discuss, and
modify user-generated content. !
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They introduce substantial and pervasive
changes to communication between
organizations, communities, and individuals
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Wikipedia

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5. Hurts the IQ more than smoking pot.!
An impediment to wisdom.
Will inflame impressionable youths.
Overwhelms people with information and is
"confusing and harmful” to the mind.
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6. Hurts the IQ more than smoking pot.!
CNN 2005 ABOUT EMAIL
An impediment to wisdom.
Plato 5th Century BC ABOUT THE WRITTEN WORD
Will inflame impressionable youths.
Benedictine Monk 15th Century ABOUT THE PRINTING PRESS
Overwhelms people with information and is
"confusing and harmful" to the mind.
Conrad Gesner 1600’s ABOUT BOOKS
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7. “…too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication.”
– Western Union internal memo, 1876 ABOUT THE TELEPHONE
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8. 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re
born is normal and ordinary and is just a
natural part of the way the world works.
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2. Anything that's invented between when you’re
fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and
revolutionary and you can probably get a
career in it.
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3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is
against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt
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12. •Slow Transmission
•Time Consuming
•No Guarantees
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13. Instantaneous
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14. Public
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15. Interactive
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16. Real-Time
News
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25. “Technology will not be to blame if Americans fail
to encompass this system within the political
tradition of free speech. On the contrary,
electronic technology is conducive to freedom.
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The degree of diversity and plenitude of access
that mature electronic technology allows far
exceed what is enjoyed today. Computerized
information networks of the twenty-first century
need not be any less free for all to use without
hindrance than was the printing press.
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Only political errors might make them so.”
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Ithiel de Sola Pool - Technologies of Freedom
On Free Speech In An Electronic Age (1984)
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