Voices

Do you have a blog? Have you started a Facebook account? How about a MySpace, Twitter, or YouTube account? Do you keep current on what's happening in the world through newspapers that come once a day, or through that magical, rectangular piece of plastic with the light-up, touchable screen? Do you talk to your mother through the old-fashioned, semi-reliable postal service, or have you evolved from the age of dinosaurs yet? The way we communicate in this world is changing, whether we are on the train or being dragged behind by a rope. This shift in ideas, communication, and media searching is huge. It's astronomical. People born in this millennium, in the past 10-15 years, will grow up completely immersed in the "social network." They will learn to speak, to read and write, not through books and pencils on paper, but through online videos, through downloadable software, and with a stylus on a touchpad. If you aren't on board, this shift will bring you to your knees, leaving you at the feet of the technologically savvy.

Our old, familiar ways of talking to each other are being outdated by the technological giant of digital communication. Remember back to the time when we were writing notes, folding them, passing them, (two rows over, four seats back) and hoping the professor wasn't looking? How on earth can that stand up to the near-instantaneous transmission of ideas, text, pictures, and information through text-messaging, instant messaging, and "tweeting"? Well, the truth is, it can't. 

Writing and personally delivering a piece of paper has become too much hassle for us. We've created ways to write essays and deliver them to the entire world to ponder, and the only energy we expend is the tiny bit it takes to move our fingers an inch. Why go through the periodical editors, television directors, and publishers to put our beliefs out there, when we can do it all ourselves on, let's say, Blogger.com? Our web of media and social networking is so big, it allows us to research the latest issues, write a 5 page report, and email it to professors, employers, and close friends, without moving from our comfortable sofa. We can create a virtual voice that influences the world, without ever showing our faces. Pretty soon, social networking may be the only way to influence the world with your ideas. After all, it takes a lot of people to keep an idea alive, and where better to find those people than online? The people are out there, waiting for us to say something.

If you haven't already begun to create your voice, you're in trouble. According to Gideon Burton, resumes will soon be made obsolete by the documentation of our online activities. College degrees will need to be accompanied by the online "transcripts" of our lives. Anything online, our creative work, our ideas, our blogs and social networks, they will all be our resumes, our transcripts, and the first real impression the world has of us. So if you want to impress potential employers, you'd best get going on that online presence. If you want some pull in tomorrow's society, you had better build yourself an audience, because pretty soon social networks will be the new classrooms and courtrooms. They will be the new homes of the greatest debates mankind has ever seen.

By finding your way online, discovering blogs, and watching viral videos, you've already taken your first steps into the viral era. But that's just the beginning. There's so much more to discover in this complex new era. There's so much to appreciate and experience. There is so much to influence.

Have you found your voice?