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My perspective, ignorant and not fully informed, is based off of articles’ opinions of an event first, and the event second. 

One section of The Google Doctrine was very influential in my understanding of the Twitter protests in 2009 Iran. An “analysis by Sysosomos found only 19,235 Twitter accounts registered in Iran (0.027 percent of the population) on the eve of the 2009 elections”. What followed from this statistic was how the concept of disembodied identities made it difficult to accurately identify the amount of actual protesters. Just as nobody knows you are a dog on the Internet, nobody knows you are a politically charged protesting Iranian either. 

I would like to look at this issue with less skepticism, but through personal experience validated by the readings we did on “There’s No Wifi in Heaven” lead me to believe that there are plenty of trolls out on the internet that interrupt our “correct” data.

This event in 2009 is more a testament to social shaping of technology rather than technological determinism. I think this because people in Iran wouldn’t have come upon Twitter had they not recognized it as a forum that other people used to make their voice heard in whatever way that was. Twitter affords people to speak their minds, but the uprise in Iran and other countries are results of understanding social norms and using Twitter for political activism.

Fan art. Lots of fan art. 

On /r/zelda, there is no original content being made, just appreciation of something that already exists. Therefore the bulk of the popular posts made on /r/zelda are fan’s renditions of particular favorite things in a game. Redditors will post pictures of their favorite scene from the game, or maybe draw an awesome sketch of a character. 

People love showing off to others the sweet Zelda swag they bought online too. It’s definitely a norm to show off, and maybe rub some faces in some cool item you got related to the series. People like to dress up as characters, known as cosplaying, and post pictures of that too. Hey. To each his/her own.

There would definitely be a lot of room for breaking social norms on /r/zelda, just say “Ocarina of Time was stupid” - and you have done it. 

This CNN Tech article, which kicks off CNN’s series “Our Mobile Society”, looks at smartphones as a new addition to the human body; a super powered appendage. Author John Sutter makes a clear and vivid point at the beginning of his article. Two men set themselves ablaze in Tunisia, but only one man, Mohamed Bouazizi, is credited with starting a revolution. Why? Because his death was captured on camera by a pedestrian’s smartphone.

This got me nodding my head in understanding. Smartphones allow us a level of connectivity previously unknown. Simply by owning one, we as normal everyday people are able to capture and share information that can affect large social change.

The article continues by unearthing young, tech-savvy interactions that are commonplace today (at least to me), such as youth preferring to text rather than call, or the fact that there are 6 billion cell phones in our 7 billion people world. The article calls smartphones the “Swiss Army Knives of modern living”, which I like.

If super-connectivity, cloud sharing, or mobile online banking don’t strike you as superhuman, how about a product by Google allowing the user to “see data about people they encounter or about deals offered inside restaurants they pass.”? 

Being a solute in this highly technological solvent that is our culture, it is easy to take for granted the amazing abilities that we have access to with smartphones. Smartphones are little superpower machines. I just don’t know if all 6 billion of us owners are superheroes ready enough to handle them. Here’s the part where you throw in the obligatory Spiderman quote about responsibility. If we use these phones in excess, we lose ourselves into a world of narcissism and self absorption. If used moderately, we can recognize them as tools to connect, share, revolutionize, and efficiently complete a task. 

We are inherently incredible creatures. How we as a culture use smartphones will either highlight this or discredit it.