Do the Internet and information and communications technologies really empower ordinary citizens?Today's world is usually described as a village by the media. The communications technologies, which erased thousand of miles of oceans and deserts changed the reality of geography.
These progresses have been really fast and modernity is a concept which improves everyday.
Internet opened the world to us increasing our social network. It created, not only the opportunity of international socialization, but increased the intra national communication. People of a community have now another way of instantaneous and almost unlimited interaction apart of the traditional physical communication. This is helping sharing information and knowledge, increasing the opportunity of distance education and works. It is a fantastic tool for us to empower ourselves.
But as the world is shrinking the major part of it is excluded. Internet and the new communications technologies are only available in the richest part of the globe, which gives an anamorphic shape to the world.
The sector is improving everyday, encouraged by the hyper consumption. But if the quantity of social exchange is improved, what about people we can meet outside the Internet? It seems that the more we learn to know about our outer world, the more we forget about our neighbors.
More than to affect the social web, a power cut could show how fragile the “modern” society can be. For example in 1989 in Quebec, a cut of electricity, due to a solar flare, lasted up to nine hours. A larger, solar flare is expected for 2012, it might damage in the first place the most industrial countries. This case highlights our dependence on technology.
The new communication technologies gave us more possibility than ever but do we really need all of this? We already have a lot of possibility from our environment. We should take more care of our values, stopping our race for superfluous and consumption.