1. Soren Gordhamer writes and consults on ways we can more creatively and effectively use the
technologies of our age, including social media. He is the author of "Wisdom 2.0" (HarperOne, 2009).
You can follow him on Twitter at @SorenG.
It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how
different it is from ten or even five years ago. In recent years social media, likely more than anything else,
has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed
over the past few years because of tools like Facebook and Twitter might have been unimaginable for
most people at the beginning of this decade.
But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one
another and the world around us. Here are the top areas that social media has affected in our daily lives.
1. Where We Get Our News
If you're like me, each morning before checking Yahoo! or Google News or an online newspaper site like
USA Today or CNN, you first look at the stories your friends and people that you follow are sharing via
Twitter or Facebook. After all, you didn't choose the editors at newspapers and other publications, but
you did choose the people and groups that you follow on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks.
Friends on social media are increasingly becoming people’s trusted sources of information, even more
than search engines. Tech blogger Mark Cuban recently noted, "For the 1st time ever, more people are
finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google.”
Of course, many people still use RSS feeds to stay up-to-date on blogs and publications of interest, but
our list of sources for what is worthy of our attention has expanded significantly. Furthermore, by getting
our news from social media, we know who is recommending it, and can easily communicate with that
person about it. News is more social than ever.
2. How We Start and Do Business
It is easier than ever to start and launch a business today, in great part thanks to social media. We can not
only locate potential collaborators and employees through interest-focused Facebook groups, Twitter
searches, and niche social networks, but perhaps more importantly, social media gives people who have
time, but little money for advertising, the chance to engage with others and promote their business. A
recent article in the New York Times concluded, "For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget,
Twitter has become their sole means of marketing."
While business in the past was generally conducted with those in one’s immediate environment, social
media, including everything from blogging to tweeting to posting videos on YouTube, has opened new
possibilities for both customers and clients. Who we do business with and how we promote that business
has moved increasingly online, and for small business especially, social media has proved valuable.
3. How We Meet and Stay in Touch with People
People certainly still meet others at social venues like clubs and parties, but it is easier than ever to
discover people who share our interests through social media, whether that means via groups on Facebook
or following people on Twitter. Even if your interests lie in an obscure area, like 15th century poetry in
France or Nepalese art, there is probably a Facebook group about it, and a Twitter search will likely turn
up other people talking about the same subject.

2. Of course, there is only so much communication that can happen through a social network, but
via Tweetups and other in-person events, people are expanding these online interactions to face-to-face
meetings. The introductions are initially made through social networks, then people develop the
relationship using phone calls and in-person meetings.
Studies reveal that our time on social networks has nearly tripled in the last year, and while Facebook has
always primarily centered around connecting with people and staying in touch with friends, according to
a study on eMarketer, “41.6% percent of Internet users who used Twitter did so to keep in touch with
their friends.”
In other words, social media is increasingly being used to find and maintain both old and potentially new
friendships.
4. What We Reveal
The old paradigm in communication was that people generally revealed very little of their fears and
doubts. They tried to present the image of themselves to other people as completely confident and
knowledgeable. The goal was to make sure that you appeared like you were always in complete control.
But this is shifting, in part, because of social media. The paradigm is now no longer to try to appear
perfect, but to be more transparent with your thoughts and feelings, to reveal your humanness.
We now have queens acknowledging that they get nervous at times when speaking, CEOs being more
honest and at times using blogs to express reservations over past decisions, and people openly sharing
personal views on social issues. Of course, what we decide to reveal and when to reveal it can be delicate,
and there will always likely be items we wish to keep private. However, rather than working to hide our
thoughts and feelings, social media is helping to create greater personal transparency.
5. What We Can Influence
It used to be a big deal that Oprah had over 20 million people watch her show every week or that the New
York Times was read by millions of people, and while these large media outlets still control much of our
attention, now with social media, power is increasingly more widespread. So-called mainstream media is
no longer always the driving influencer of public opinion.
On Twitter, some individuals now have a million or more followers, Facebook Pages can also have
hundreds of thousands of fans, and YouTube videos can get millions of views when they go viral. Most of
this content is coming from regular people, rather than big, corporate-owned media organizations. For
example, people like occasional Mashable guest writer Brandon Mendelson, who has over 950,000
followers on Twitter, have used social media to increase their influence beyond what was possible for
"regular people" in the past.
Even if we have few followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook or subscribers to our blog, the average
person’s influence is increasing as communication channels become more open and fluid. As the
networks for sharing and amplifying information strengthen, the ability of each person to influence public
opinion and policies increases. As a result, we feel much less like passive bystanders and much more like
participants who have a voice in the events in our world.
Conclusion
In every era, cultures go through numerous changes, and in recent years ours has been more impacted
than anything else by social media. Large media companies are not likely to go away overnight, nor will
the need to communicate by phone or meet people in person, but social media is providing yet one more
means of engaging with people on this vast planet of ours, and if used effectively can give all of us
greater choice in how we live and what happens in our world.

3. Walt Mossberg: Well first of all, when you say “technology,” you got to realize that that’s a ridiculously
broad and vague term.
Bio technology is going to be immense. There’s all kinds of other tech. I deal with what you might call
digital technology, or information technology. Well it already has changed the world. Where do you want
to begin? It’s changed the world in every way. People are always connected. People are always on the
grid. There are very good things about that, there are very bad things about that.
It’s no longer the case that if you live in a physical neighborhood and don’t go into some other kinds of
physical neighborhood, you’ll never meet other kinds of people. There are no boundaries anymore;
digitally at least. You can meet people from the other side of town where you might never have gone 50
years ago. And you can meet people from the other side of the world. These are hugely powerful and
transformative things.
I can remember when I was using CompuServe, which was an all-text, very crude thing on my old Apple
II. I can remember how thrilling it was that I could go look up something in some library from, I think it
was Poland or somewhere, that had been put online.
And you would say to yourself, “I’m sitting in my house, and I’m able to go look this thing up.”
I think sometimes we take this for granted. It’s happened so fast.
But in all of human history, there is no doubt that only in the last 20 years, or even 10 years, have average
people gained the power to tap so much of the world’s knowledge. And we don’t really even know what
the implications of that are going to be down the line.
There’s also tremendous potential for harm. There’s fraud. There’s identity theft. There’s child predators
out there who find it easier to snare victims because it’s all anonymous, and it’s all digital, and they can
pretend to be anyone they want.
But there’s even subtler things that you have to wonder about. Are people sitting in their houses looking
at screens instead of going out and meeting people and experiencing the world? Are the tools that we have
developed for social networking, or even for normal, innocent commercial marketing online, tools that
could someday be used by some totalitarian figure, or dictator, or some new sort of Hitler or Stalin?
Perfectly possible.
I’m not predicting that, but I’m just saying these technologies are neutral. They are what people make of
them. And I think we just have too little experience.
I also think the less you hear the word “Internet,” the more integrated into our lives it will be. I compare
the Internet to the electrical grid. The electrical grid is all around you. It’s in your home. It’s in your
office. It’s in your hotel room. And there is an uncounted number of things that plug into the electrical
grid. The television cameras we’re using to record this interview plug into the electrical grid. So does the
toaster oven, and the electric toothbrush, and the hairdryer that you might have used this morning.
But you did not think to yourself when you put your toast in your toaster oven, “Hey, I’m using the
electrical grid.” Or, “I’m going to use the electrical grid.” It would be laughable for you to say that.
I think the same thing is going to happen with the Internet. Instead of being seen, as a lot of people do, as
some sort of activity you perform on a device that happens to be called a “personal computer,” the
Internet is really an enormous grid or ocean of information – communications services, commerce,
marketing, entertainment, all of these things. Information.
And there are going to be innumerable devices that will connect to it, tap into it, and just use enough of it
to perform whatever function it is they are good at doing, in whatever context people want to use them in.
So for instance, you wouldn’t necessarily expect a pocket-sized device to do the same thing as a device
with a larger display. You wouldn’t necessarily be surprised, I think, in 10 years that your microwave

4. oven is plugged into the Internet. I think it will be. On the other hand, it won’t be plugged into the
Internet for the purpose of you getting your e-mail on the door of the microwave. It’ll be plugged in so
that when you put a package of frozen food in there, the oven will just read the barcode. It will have a
connection to the Internet. It will have a database that will be constantly updated, and it will be able to
properly heat up the food. That’s the only thing it will need the Internet to do, but it will need the Internet
to do it.
So the Internet is a grid. Many devices, many kinds of software, many kinds of services running on those
devices, all of which take advantage of the grid.
Already this is true to some extent, but it’s gonna become universal in 10 years. Whenever you watch
television, you’re going to be on the Internet. Whenever you make a phone call, you’re going to be on the
Internet. And nobody’s going to say, “I’m going to go online tonight and look this up.”
I think in 10 or 15 years when you see movies from today where people say, “I found this online. I’m
going on the Web. Let’s go online and check it out,” people are going to laugh because we’re always
going to be online. And so those are some of the big things that I think are going on.
Recorded: Sep 13, 2007.
REFERENCE: http://bigthink.com/videos/how-is-technology-changing-the-way-we-live-3
Globally, people are using about 25% more natural resources than the planet can replace. In the UK,
we’re consuming three times our fair share of the planet’s natural resources. We face an ‘ecological
overshoot’ that will have severe consequences for both people and nature unless we humans change the
way we live.
Although advances in technology have helped people to produce things more efficiently, the benefits have
been swamped by ever-higher levels of consumption by affluent Western economies and the growing
middle classes in the developing world.
Some 70% of humanity’s global footprint arises from carbon emissions; other pressures are linked to
commodities such as crops, meat, fish and wood, and the freshwater we take from rivers and lakes.
WWF is seeking a One Planet Future where both people and nature thrive within their fair share of what’s
available. We are developing a range of One Planet sustainability initiatives to support this goal, helping
to bring sustainability and equity to production, trade and consumption.
With an established track record in supporting the development of sustainable lifestyles, WWF is well
placed to provide leadership in helping to reduce the UK’s footprint and supporting other countries to do
the same.
REFERENCE: http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/changing_the_way_we_live/