Social Media Flash Mobs Hmmm….

Reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody has me wondering about social media flash mobs.  He relates the term flash mob to a small group of people using a particular social media tool for a short period of time.  This is precisely my assignment.  I am to blog for a week to reach (at least) my 12 classmates.  I’m intrigued, now, by my first participation in a flash mob.

What do other social media flash mobs look like?  Evite would be one tool that focuses on a flash mob model.   Can you think of others that cater to a small group of people for a short amount of time?  I’m coming up blank at the moment.

However, I can think of a few examples of a larger social media flash mob moving from the virtual world into the physical world.  The Texas state senator Wendy Davis’s physical flash mob of support?  Someone posted the video on YouTube, others spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other media.  The resulting crowd that gathered in the rotunda was so loud the senators could hardly hear each other and the vote came too late.  (There’s more on that story today, if you’re interested.)

There were social media flash mobs during tropical storm Sandy.  Word spread through the social media and people began to share where gas stations had power, where there were places to charge phones, and where people could find shelter.

Just in these three examples I can see that social media is changing not only the way we socialize, but also the way we govern and the way we respond to emergencies.  Does the idea of online flash mobs give you an idea of how social media is changing our world?  Will you share it here?

So What’s With All the Gratuitous Gratitude?

Back in March of this year I was struck by an off hand comment a classmate made during a History of Christian Spirituality discussion.  She said that James Martin SJ tweets his daily examen.  I was fascinated by this idea.  Why would someone tweet something so private and personal as his daily examen?

If you don’t know about Twitter, here’s a description from the book Click 2 Save:  “Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, with every post limited to 140 characters, including spaces between words.  Like blog posts, tweets tell a story in real time through short bursts of commentary and information.  Likewise, the aggregation of tweets over time tells a more extended story.”

Something about the combination of the fleeting nature, the 140 character constraint, and the completely open forum of Twitter called to me spiritually.  I thought about the impact Martin would have with his huge following by showing this deeply personal piece of himself in a really tight capsule.  (Turns out he doesn’t tweet his examen right now but that is beside the point.)  What could I do with the limited exposure I have on the web to highlight the notion that God lives and moves in this world, my world?

An entire examen every day was way too much for me to tweet. Yet, I believe that God moves in my life all the time, all I have to do is slow down enough to recognize it.  In prayer, the notion of a gratitude a day began to evolve. Now the project has 4 requirements:

• it needs to be about me personally (I can’t tell another’s story for them),
• it needs to be on Twitter (public for anyone who wants to read it),
• it needs to be something specific (a particular thing that was important to me on that particular day),
• and the whole project should look like an ordinary life (because that it what it is… just my ordinary every day life).

 

This project has already given me a wonderful new way of viewing my day.  I am constantly aware of the little things that I am grateful for during my day.  I smile a bit more often now.  Yet, there is another fruit of this labor.  Somehow through this very specific, very constrained medium of Twitter, my life with God is getting recorded for others to witness.  

That boggles my mind!  While I was brought up to be a witness to the gospel, I never imagined it looking this way.  I don’t try to convert anyone, I just share the little things I am grateful for in my day.  I don’t believe this gives a full view of the gospel, my life, or Christianity.  Hardly.  Just a tiny peek into an ordinary life in our ordinary world with an extraordinary God.  

What are you grateful for?

Is my world real?

Have you ever wondered how much control you have over the information you allow into your world?  

I have been pondering this question since reading this in Mary Hess‘s Engaging Technology in Theological Education:  “[Technology} makes it seem possible to control my environment to a large extent.  It makes it seem possible to choose how and with whom my children and I will interact.  I am convinced that such control is illusory, but it is a highly seductive illusion, and it comes at a high price.”   Can I control my environment through technology?  If not, what price do I pay for believing that I can?

I don’t watch much television, or listen to the radio much, or read any newspapers.  I get most of my current events information from word of mouth, online news sources, and links in my Facebook newsfeed.   I have good reasons for not engaging these media as my main source of news but I had not thought out all the consequences of so narrowly limiting my exposure to the world.  Have I excised the voices unlike my own from my life’s newsfeed?  If so, then how do I encounter the richness of God’s creation?  

If not, then what price am I paying by believing the illusion?  Hess points to the environmental price of not seeing my American consumption and the role it plays for the people in poverty of the world.  I think there is a more personal price as well.  I lose a vital corrective lens when I start believing in the illusion of control.  Control will fail and then I am knocked off my center by the mere presence of that which I have banned from my vision.

 

What do you think?  Can you really control your view of the world through the technology by which you receive information?  If not, what price do you pay for living the lie?

 

Hello World

Hello World!