Reminded
A few articles in Friday’s Globe and Mail that reminded me why I do what I do. Quote from the article In a skeptical, urbanized country, volunteers are an endangered species”.
“a sense of community seems in decline and the reasons are varied and complicated” . . . “There is also the matter of urbanization. People in a small community feel a link to others in the community, even those they do not know, whereas there might be no such empathy felt in a city with those barely a block away. And with 80 per cent of the country now urbanized - with 55 per cent of the population found within the four big city centers of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and the Edmonton-Calgary corridor - the detachment is only going to increase.”
Then a story on last week’s ruling on p2p sharing: “Are we surfers or serfs?”
“All communications and a great deal of commerce, not just listening to music , are going to be completely digitized, and sooner rather than later. Unless we are watchful and outspoken, a few big corporate and government forces will get even more scary powers to control on-line activity for their own benefit and profit”.
Neither of the stories are exactly news-breaking, but they are important and I’m glad that they are getting space next to the more “exciting” news.
April 12th, 2004 at 8:40 pm
Comment for Soci 353:
Sometimes I question my emphasis on technology in regards to communities. I’m spending a lot of time+energy trying to set up technological tools to enable/foster community building.
How much of what I’m doing is counter-productive? Even if we build great technological tools, does the damage that technology does to community outway any beneficial effects we can come up with? Should we not worry about adding to the damage because our bit is only a “drop in the bucket”?
I need to have a long talk with a few luddites so I can work out some of these thoughts. Everyone I work with has already “drank the kool-aid”.