MySpace and the Politics of the Future
The lonely libertarian noticed this story on California schools shutting down for a brief time over the immigration uproar. (More here from what looks like the same AP source.) What's really interesting:
From the AOL piece:
On the popular Web site MySpace.com, where many students have said they go for protest information, the word was to wait until Friday for the next mass demonstration.
And from the Pe.com piece:
Ceres High School students hyped the rally through the popular social network MySpace.com and met with the school's principal to plan the event ahead of time.
With all the negative news about the website MySpace.com the past few months, it tends to be forgotten that at it's most basic level, MySpace is merely the latest means of communication and interaction on the internet for young people. The medium itself is neither good or bad, any more than the printing press or the telephone is good or bad. In all these cases we're talking about technology with the potential to affect political discourse. And that's precisely what we've seen with these protests.
This is not to say that MySpace is bound to have the same impact on society as the printing press- The lonely libertarian's only point is that the MySpace critics don't have much of a grasp of what they're criticizing. MySpace has tremendous potential as a organ for political discourse and political change, yet the critics have no conception of this. I imagine someone once criticized the printing press too, when some pedophile lured young girls with his horrible printed pamphlets.
From the AOL piece:
On the popular Web site MySpace.com, where many students have said they go for protest information, the word was to wait until Friday for the next mass demonstration.
And from the Pe.com piece:
Ceres High School students hyped the rally through the popular social network MySpace.com and met with the school's principal to plan the event ahead of time.
With all the negative news about the website MySpace.com the past few months, it tends to be forgotten that at it's most basic level, MySpace is merely the latest means of communication and interaction on the internet for young people. The medium itself is neither good or bad, any more than the printing press or the telephone is good or bad. In all these cases we're talking about technology with the potential to affect political discourse. And that's precisely what we've seen with these protests.
This is not to say that MySpace is bound to have the same impact on society as the printing press- The lonely libertarian's only point is that the MySpace critics don't have much of a grasp of what they're criticizing. MySpace has tremendous potential as a organ for political discourse and political change, yet the critics have no conception of this. I imagine someone once criticized the printing press too, when some pedophile lured young girls with his horrible printed pamphlets.
posted by lonely libertarian at 3:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home