Flags, Fifa and Facebook

Yesterday's adventure had me frolicking about Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey with a few friends. What a GREAT idea to go now before the season really kicks in - we had perfect weather and there were hardly any lines. However, while at the park I was missing the World Cup Argentina-Nigeria game. I had asked my dad to send me text updates of the game but quickly discovered something incredible brought about by the miracle of facebook and blackberries.

Ah, yes, blackberries. I have a love-hate relationship with my crackberry. I hate how when I'm trying to escape the world of stress it becomes nearly impossible to ignore all the e-mails and text messages I recieve every three minutes via crackberry. But on rare occassions, such as the football match yesterday, it can be really convenient and helpful. The ability to check facebook on my blackberry mixed with the status updates in my newsfeed allowed me to follow the game easily.

Super cool, right? Aside from that - my newsfeed was filled with status updates about the game from all the friends I made on my semester program. Good job technology. Two points to social media.

It's amazing how easy it is to stay in touch with everything going on in this world with today's technology. Globalization isn't just something that we are reading about in textbooks or discussing in terms of political science and international relations - it's something that we are furthuring every single day.

When you update your facebook status and a friend from halfway around the world can read it and comment on it, that's part of globalization. When I write on this blog and my French roommate from Argentina reads it, that's part of globalization. When the World Cup Soccer matches are taking place in South Africa and I can get facebook updates on my blackberry about game scores and track the play-by-play of the live match online, that's globalization. The speed at which information travels from one point to another on this globe is absurd. Everyday we are sending and recieving thousands of pieces of information across the planet - and it seems so normal, so mundane, so uninteresting to us because we do it ALL THE TIME.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it astounding how much our society has come to depend on high speed internet connections and wireless mobile devices. With the release of the new iPhone and it's front-facing camera, they say that the future of communications is going to be video-calling from your phone.

With all of this new technology it's scary for us media students. We are in the middle of a transition from print media to digital media. Not only do we need to learn the basics of writing, printing and publication but now we are expected to be leaders on this new path that news delivery is taking thanks to the Internet. Working in digital media this summer has definitely opened up my eyes to the possibilities and easier access to larger audiences that the Internet readily provides. Somehow though I wish that digital media didn't exist because I still love the simplicity of picking up a newspaper or turning on the telly to watch the evening news. I'm not the biggest fan of being bombarded 24/7 with twitter updates and newsfeeds telling me about some celeb's latest breakdown.

I feel like the media sector is becoming more focused on the entertainment industry. Granted, this isn't any new knowledge - entertainment pieces will bring in a larger audience which is better for advertising revenue. Everyone knows and has known this, but it still bothers me.

Ok I'm not really sure where I'm going with this anymore - like I said, my relationship with the Internet is a love/hate one and I could probably ramble on for hours about all this so let me stop and revert to my original comment: Facebook updating me about the World Cup Soccer while I'm riding Nitro at Six Flags? That's a win in my books.... ;)

More soon!!

xx Nikki