simplyann.net

Now that Twitter has become a mainstream buzzword, with companies, celebrities and television personalities pontificating on it’s merits or lack thereof, some OG (that’s original gangsta for those without a ghetto degree) Twitter users are remarking that they forgo all other forms of really simple syndication (RSS). What they’re really saying is that we should all move to social websites as a way of getting our Internet fix.

In a perfect world wide web, this is a mirror of our real world. We tend to get our news from our own networks, neighborhoods, workplaces, places of worship and so on. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that. But in real life, our networks are a subset of the entire world and, as such, aren’t a really good snapshot of just how diverse the world is.

The Internet, while ingenious in its invention, adoption and take over of our means of communication, still lacks a good representation of the world as it is. If it is truly a global connector, we are missing truthful representations of Africa, Central America and the South Pacific. But we don’t even need to go that far to make the case.

What about our own neighborhoods? Besides what’s reported on the local TV news stations and their online representations, I have no idea what goes down in my Los Angeles suburb. And a lot of, shall we say, interesting? things have happened in the pass six months: a SWAT team being deployed to my brother’s classmate’s street, a house fire just up our street, a smashed telephone pole and several break-ins on one of the major side streets. If I have trouble getting information on these events in my community, how can I even begin limiting my news sources to one medium? I would need every source available to even get one side of the story for each of these events.

Which brings us to this: If the story makers aren’t getting their stories out to every possible news source, their stories will never be told, much less heard. Even in a society as “technologically advanced” as the United States of America, it’s difficult to be connected in your neighborhood if you’re not politically active locally, or part of some sort of coalition or business association. And in a supposedly “global community” we are still quite local in our news networks, on and offline.

This isn’t a bad thing; it’s an opportunity. An opportunity for a grassroots movement of individuals and communities each equipped with their own agency and tools to connect each other to online conversation.