I’m currently working with some Ukrainians to set up some trainings in June to teach New Media skills to NGOs and journalists in Ukraine. This is giving me a chance to take a stroll through New Media on a macro level, as I think through which tools make the most sense to teach, and what sorts of big picture things we should say about them.
I was talking to Rebekah Heacock the other day about Google-well, no, I should say I was having a conversation via Gmail about Google-when I began to wonder just how deeply enmeshed we should allow ourselves to become in this Google beast that is consuming the cyberworld. The conversation started with me saying that I’d finally, at long last, and after much ribbing and coercion from Rebekah, made the leap over to Gmail, giving Hotmail the boot. It would have happened sooner, except that I was in grad school at Columbia, where there is no time for midstream mass behavioral change like switching your entire email life over to a new platform. Now that I have finally made the switch, I feel like Mohinder being handed the keys to his very own multimillion dollar research facility (for the record, I don’t feel like Mohinder in any other way, because I am not a bad character on a not-very well-planned TV show). I had to tell someone about it.
Rebekah said something to the effect of her whole life being on Google, that everything she does is on some Google platform. Not really, of course, but very close.
This got me to thinking: is it really such a good idea to use all these Google tools? Can we get too enmeshed in Google? I think so. Read the rest of this entry ?
