Participatory New Media & Collective Action
June 16th, 2008Howard Rheingold, a brilliant lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford and author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution is a major influence in our thinking about what internet-mediated video can do for public health research and advocacy. Howard Rheingold writes, and I completely agree, about the salience of this historical moment in technological and social change.
“If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty-first-century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates)” (Rheingold, 2008, pp 99-100)
His talk at the TED conference — viewable here — encapsulates some of the thrilling possibilities for democracy, collaboration, and (in my mind) health promotion in our century.
