One of the extensions that new media has provided is an extension to the volume and distance that a single voice can travel. Facebook allows users to tap (or poke) the shoulders of long lost acquaintances worldwide, and then reconnect. Through twitter networking even the most banal of activities, such as the walk out your front door, can be nationally announced events. It is difficult to wade through the volumes of noise that all of the social networkers make in order to hear the tones of culture, the message that follows the medium. It is important to see two opposing realities with regards to all of this.
1. If information is power and you allow many people, organizations, governments and marketers access to "your" information you increase their power. This can have the effect of increasing the manipulation of your world through more consumer specific marketing, or the implications of more sinister uses of power. If these others work for good than you lend your voice to theirs.
2. You are given acces to a larger, higher and louder platform of international discourse. You have access to endless amounts of information to inform your speach on that level and are therefore far more powerful than individuals of previous generations.
It is into this context of immense possibility and cultural dissemination through new media that you are coming into adulthood. And so what will you do? Where will you spend your efforts in this culture.
"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsability that comes with his freedom" -Bob Dylan
"Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life." -Mary Oliver
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