This week in class our topic of discussion was how the invention of the internet and its incorporation into daily life has affected the way we communicate and influenced society. To prime this discussion we watched two videos from Ted.com. The first video, a speech by Seth Godin, focused on the idea of "tribes" in a society. This "Tribe theory" relies on the idea that everyone wants to be part of a group or "tribe" and every tribe needs a leader. Godin Further argues that the new technological developments such as facebook, blogs, and chat rooms makes it all to easy to become a leader so now absolutely anyone can be a person in power. The second video, a speech by Ted shirky, disscussed essentialy the changing plane of media coverage in the 21st century. Both videos offered looks into how various updates in technology, such as the internet, have definitively changed the landscape of communication in our soceity; However, each video works from a unique angle and offers a distinct perspective on the issue.
The first aspect of the speeches id like to look at is their purpose. In his speech, Shirky first opens by recapping the current technological landscape. Then to prime his thesis Shirky outlines a brief history of the changing modes of communication (i.e. telegram, telephone, radio, internet) and their affect on communication in our society. Shirky also provides examples of current news that reflects this major social change. For instance, new cell phone capabilites have made it possible for every citizen to individually police voting security and ensure the purity of the vote. Finally, Shirky closes his speech with a question, "How can we make best use of this media?". Shirky's closing with a question works as a tool to continue independent discussion on the issue after the conclusion of the speech. It appears that the Shirky video was meant to be a tool to introduce people to the changing media discussion and open up dialogue about it.
Although the second video also reflected on our current methods of communication, the purpose of Godin's speech seemed distinct from the first. Where as shirky opened with a statement and closed with a question, Godin inversely opened with a question and then answered it throughout the development of the speech. The fact that Godin answered his own question in the speech makes it less likely that he merely wanted to open dialogue on the issue. In the first part of his speech Shirky asks "What do we do everyday?". Godin then introduces his thesis, stateing that "we try to change everything". Through examples of multiple leaders who have made a significant change on our society Godin explains how one would go about changing society via the use of leadership among tribes and how the current technological/communicational landscape makes being a leader almost too easy. Most importantly, Godin ends the speech with a proposal, "Create a movement". This proposal higlights the general feeling of the speech that Godin is working more as a motivational speaker, urging people torward a certain goal, rather than simply increasing their understanding of the realtionship between technology, communication and our current social setting.
This difference in the purpose of the two videos changes the entire feel of the speeches. While Shirky's speech felt informational and rather serious, in order to facilitate knowledgeable conversation on a weighty issue; Godin seemed to focus a lot more on entertaining the audience while developing his point. Godin made jokes, used humorous slides and used an example of a jewish wedding tradition of breaking a lightbulb to keep his speech interesting to the audience. The speech still felt informative but at the same time much lighter than the Shirky video.
