Communicating about technology
To understand how new technologies are developed and used, we need to consider both their technical features and the ways that social actions shape them. Through communication, people assign different meanings to technologies. In these discussions, we are sharing our visions – both optimistic and pessimistic – about society. Communicating about technology in this way helps us think about new meanings, of new uses, and even of new kinds of technologies.
Communications researcher Robert McChesney has written many books on the development of different technologies – from radio and telephones to the Internet. As a critical scholar, he explores how politics and economics are embedded in the ways that these large-scale information and communication technologies are developed and used.
McChesney's book Digital Disconnect explores the Internet revolution and its implications for society. He talks about how the Internet has increased the amount of information available in the world today. For example, in 2003 the sum total of all the information created since the dawn of time was around 5 billion gigabytes.
By 2010, people created 5 billion gigabytes of data every 2 days.
Between 2010 and 2012, the amount of content hosted on YouTube doubled in size. In less than a week, people now upload as much content to YouTube as was created in the entire history of Hollywood.
The Internet is big in other ways. Think about how much time we spend on it. In 2009, the average American spent around 11 and a half hours a day consuming 'information'. This is up from 7 and a half hours a day in 1980.
The number of people consuming – and contributing – information has also increased. From around 10 million users in 1995, the Internet had around 2 billion users by 2011. Predictions for 2020 suggest another 3 billion people will be online by then.
The short video below – called A Day in the Life of Social Media – is from 2010. It shows the extent of social media use back then. Do you think it's changed now? Has it gotten even bigger?
To understand how new technologies are developed and used, we need to consider both their technical features and the ways that social actions shape them. Through communication, people assign different meanings to technologies. In these discussions, we are sharing our visions – both optimistic and pessimistic – about society. Communicating about technology in this way helps us think about new meanings, of new uses, and even of new kinds of technologies.
Communications researcher Robert McChesney has written many books on the development of different technologies – from radio and telephones to the Internet. As a critical scholar, he explores how politics and economics are embedded in the ways that these large-scale information and communication technologies are developed and used.
McChesney's book Digital Disconnect explores the Internet revolution and its implications for society. He talks about how the Internet has increased the amount of information available in the world today. For example, in 2003 the sum total of all the information created since the dawn of time was around 5 billion gigabytes.
By 2010, people created 5 billion gigabytes of data every 2 days.
Between 2010 and 2012, the amount of content hosted on YouTube doubled in size. In less than a week, people now upload as much content to YouTube as was created in the entire history of Hollywood.
The Internet is big in other ways. Think about how much time we spend on it. In 2009, the average American spent around 11 and a half hours a day consuming 'information'. This is up from 7 and a half hours a day in 1980.
The number of people consuming – and contributing – information has also increased. From around 10 million users in 1995, the Internet had around 2 billion users by 2011. Predictions for 2020 suggest another 3 billion people will be online by then.
The short video below – called A Day in the Life of Social Media – is from 2010. It shows the extent of social media use back then. Do you think it's changed now? Has it gotten even bigger?
Video: A Day in the Life of Social Media (2010)
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