I feel as though digital media both impede and expands our knowledge; on a personal level as well as the human collective. Recent world reactions to the George Floyd-BlackLivesMatter movement and the global response to the pandemic are fantastic examples of how social media expands our knowledge collectively. The google opt-out satirical video poked fun at the inability to escape google’s data mining grasp. Imagining a mountainside community of people living off-grid isn’t so far fetched. The show Upload (Amazon Prime) imagined similar fictional communities as an option to the traditional afterlife, that allowed contact with those still living. They lived off-grid and maintained limited physical contact with the living.
Raymond Williams warned us about the potential for social and political intersection but did he imagine the political disruption that would ensue after Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in data mining during the last presidential election? I do agree however with both Rheingold and Knapp in how the internet would foster a new politically conscious community. There is an online community on different social media platforms called 7 Train Blues. This community is somewhat specific to me in Queens because allows us commuters on the 7 train and outlet for issues that we felt were falling onto deaf city official ears. They use the pages to report on various issues from the train line (decaying infrastructure, delays, etc) that crosses various communities in Queens. It allows the train’s regular commuters to look beyond their specific neighborhood to identify broader problems and potential solutions and some local political figures also use it. My favorite so far has been locals decorating roadkill going viral in order to get their community to clean up the carcass.
