Thursday’s Big Idea
Today's Big Idea: Humanizing Technology
What is the social web doing to us? For us? What are we doing and what could we be doing with it? These are the kinds of questions people are asking on the eve of Facebook's enormously hyped initial public offering. The social networking company will open trading at somewhere between $28 and $35 a share on May 18th, 2012.
People seem to be divided into two broad camps – those who view the new technologies as a cultural threat – an addictive force that diminishes our humanity, and those who cite its enormous potential to empower individuals to effect grassroots change.
One thing's for sure: these technologies may evolve, but some form of social networking is here to stay. Therefore, argues, journalist and author Jeff Jarvis, the only relevant question is how we can harness these technologies to our advantage, rather than outsourcing their regulation to entities that may not have our best interests at heart.
