The “old” in new media: Critical divide versus globalized identities

摘要

The move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 technologies marks contemporary human relations regardless of geography, culture, and politics. Nonetheless, the history and economics of this trend continues to mark similar divisions in people's overall material wellbeing, in both the actual and virtual worlds. The digital grid empowers online participation. New forms of social time and social space are developed to challenge the split between time and space–the “timeless time” and “space of flows” (Castells, 2000). These are points of connection among people and simultaneously nods of disconnection among them. Nowadays, most disciplines engage their practitioners through social networking and virtual tools, but do these also allow students to challenge the statuesque. In order to initiate social and cultural change, the educators of the 21st century need to explore ways to democratize global identities beyond the use of weblogs, video-logs, and Facebook.