Online presence
I haven't posted much in the last two months, partly because I was doing a lot of academic writing and didn't have the mental energy to write posts on top of that. I submitted my first journal paper yesterday, and inspite of the pain and tears involved in the writing process, I am feeling happy about achieving this.
Now to the topic of this post - individual online presence. I decided to join LinkedIn today and that got me thinking about what it means for individuals to have an online presence. Throughout college I used the Internet 'anonymously', in the sense that I did not join any social networking websites, did not have a web page, did not have a blog or leave comments on others' blogs, and was not part of forums or discussion boards. Starting grad school changed that as I realized that to be successful in grad school I needed an online identity. I needed to let others know who I was and what I did in order to connect with them. Most of my colleagues have web pages to showcase their work, blogs to talk about their ideas and life in general, profiles on various social networking sites to connect with friends, LinkedIn profiles to network with professionals, flickr accounts to share their photos and the list goes on.
But what does all this mean for those who are part of this Web 2.0 revolution of connectivity, personalization, social networking, multimedia etc.? More importantly, what does it mean for those who are NOT part of this? What about the millions of office workers in Calcutta who do not have an online presence? Or the people in war-ravaged parts of the world who are focused on obtaining a decent quality of life or an education and for whom this connectivity revolution doesn't figure in the larger scheme of life?
I know this goes back to the whole issue of the digital divide and what it means for some parts of the world like North America to be highly connected and some other parts of the world like Africa mostly disconnected from the Web. And even though I am priveleged enough to be residing currently in the connected part of the world, my roots prevent me from ignoring the rest of the world. I can't help but think about how trivial some of the issues that people in the US are obsessed with are (like should they buy the new iphone or not) as compared to those that some other parts of the world are grappling with (like how to fight AIDS in Africa or how to provide basic education in rural India).
Now to the topic of this post - individual online presence. I decided to join LinkedIn today and that got me thinking about what it means for individuals to have an online presence. Throughout college I used the Internet 'anonymously', in the sense that I did not join any social networking websites, did not have a web page, did not have a blog or leave comments on others' blogs, and was not part of forums or discussion boards. Starting grad school changed that as I realized that to be successful in grad school I needed an online identity. I needed to let others know who I was and what I did in order to connect with them. Most of my colleagues have web pages to showcase their work, blogs to talk about their ideas and life in general, profiles on various social networking sites to connect with friends, LinkedIn profiles to network with professionals, flickr accounts to share their photos and the list goes on.
But what does all this mean for those who are part of this Web 2.0 revolution of connectivity, personalization, social networking, multimedia etc.? More importantly, what does it mean for those who are NOT part of this? What about the millions of office workers in Calcutta who do not have an online presence? Or the people in war-ravaged parts of the world who are focused on obtaining a decent quality of life or an education and for whom this connectivity revolution doesn't figure in the larger scheme of life?
I know this goes back to the whole issue of the digital divide and what it means for some parts of the world like North America to be highly connected and some other parts of the world like Africa mostly disconnected from the Web. And even though I am priveleged enough to be residing currently in the connected part of the world, my roots prevent me from ignoring the rest of the world. I can't help but think about how trivial some of the issues that people in the US are obsessed with are (like should they buy the new iphone or not) as compared to those that some other parts of the world are grappling with (like how to fight AIDS in Africa or how to provide basic education in rural India).
No comments:
Post a Comment