At the Crossroads of Society and Technology
What happened this last year? A bubble just burst and we didn’t even see it coming. Like all bubbles, the symptoms were there, we just did not pay attention. When it burst we were totally surprised and the fallout is significant.
We just elected one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. Who was pitted against what might have been a runner up for that distinction.
How did this happen and how did we get here. I have no idea, except I to want to find out. That is at the heart of the project I am starting up.
Technology played a hand in this. It is invasive and tied to our lives beyond our imagination. I suspect a very large percentage of the population have no idea how transparent their lives really are, and I am not talking about uncle Joe down the road knowing what you are doing. It is acknowledged tech provided a shadow operation for some during the election cycle. It also has been acknowledged that social media is the main source of information for many, and it is really media.
Everyone has signed on to some form of social media. Probably safe to say most are on Facebook, which is arguably the most powerful company in the world today if you look closely at what they control, and how many ways they are in your face… pardon the pun.
As I am planning my project and feel it is very important that we use this media platform for the project to be relevant today, one of the team members brought up a very interesting point.
"A lot of the interaction with social media and current technology lends itself to a schism between who you are offline and who you are online. The gap between the two is becoming increasingly indistinct and may be a large factor in many of the pervasive social conflicts today".
That is an interesting thought, since we will be posting online daily when we start our journey this summer to discover who the American People are… offline.
Follow our journey on the web at american-mosaic.com, or Facebook @anamericanmosaic
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