In our society, our technology is a vital part of the
invisible infrastructure of daily life. We wake up via an alarm on our cellphones,
go straight to the computer to check our e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or some
similar such social networking site or means of communication. Then, after a brief
interval in the real-world, perhaps eating with a family member while playing an
iPad game, we rush off to the train, where we spend the entire commute scrolling
Tumblr or reading our favorite blog.
It’s not just us. Companies have detailed disaster-recovery
plans in the event of an Internet outage, or a data breach, or some other unforeseen
catastrophic failure of their digital assets. Banks have plans for cyber-attacks,
and on and on to the highest levels of government with encrypted messages meant
for high-ranking officials sent across the digital airwaves.
This is a picture of our networked world, where we are
always in touch with one another, and our cell phones rarely stray further than
our pockets. In some ways, convergence of technology is very useful in such a
digital environment. Instagram now proudly proclaims that it is ‘brought to you
by Facebook,’ Yahoo bought Tumblr (Schroeder) in the Spring of 2020, and many
other more recent mergers and acquisitions can be cited. However, it is noteworthy
that convergence brings with it risks – if all of the Internet is one ten
platforms, and two of them are breached in a cyber-attack, nearly one quarter
of the Internet is at risk of privacy loss, hackers, or even more unsavory
digital elements.
Let us now examine two of the Internet’s most lauded tools –
blogs, and Wikis. Blogs can serve as a log of daily life, as in the case of the
blogs of deployed servicemen (Dao), or as community bulletins and a means of creating
meaningful change, as in the instance of a Brooklyn blog that helped lead to a
drug raid, creating a safer, more wholesome community (Wilson). In this way, blogs
have been used for collaboration amongst community members. They could likely
be used for collaboration in other ways as well, perhaps in workplaces where all
employees are invited to work on a private or public company blog where they
relay information to senior management and their coworkers.
Wikis, too, are commonly used for collaboration. Unlike blogs,
workplace wikis are generally company-specific, and private. Blogs provide a
more public sphere, while wikis provide an ease of communication and real-time editing
features that blogs often lack or fall short of.
A discussion of wikis would hardly be complete without
mentioning Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia that any literate individual
with an Internet connection and a keyboard can edit. Wikipedia has taken the
idea of an encyclopedia and revolutionized it. In a similar vein, I would love
to see a novel-writing wiki – a wiki where people come together to write and
edit one or more novels. I believe that would not only be an interesting idea,
but also an – ahem – ‘novel’ one.
Works
Cited
Dao, James. “Pentagon Keeps Wary
Watch as Troops Blog.” The New York Times,
The New York Times, 9 Sept. 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/us/09milblogs.html.
Schroeder, Stan. “ Yahoo Buys
Tumblr, Promises to Not 'Screw It up'.” Mashable,
20 May 2013,
mashable.com/2013/05/20/yahoo-officially-acquires-tumblr-promises-not-to-screw-it-up/.
Wilson, Michael. “Brooklyn Blog
Helps Lead to Drug Raid.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 26 June 2008,
www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/nyregion/26bayridge.html.
