An interesting TED talk by Clay Shirky on “How Social Media Can Make History?” as it empowers people from consuming information to participation, producing content to enabling new kind of co-operative structures which aid people to create organized groups or networks to help in collaborating against repressive regimes like China to report on real news, bypassing the censorship. He also explains the evolution of media from past 500 years and why social media has great potential to create a history - a must watch for all even if you not a social web enthusiast.
You can find the TED talk video, below:
I completely agree on his perspective that information flow is now many directional with consumers becoming producers in the new media world and social web empowers people to connect, share & collaborate for digital activism at larger scale as we have already seen during 2005 tsunami, Obama campaign, China 2008 earth quake subsequent protests and recently during Iran election protests.
What is your take?, I would love to hear your thoughts.