How Technology has Shaped Communication

With technology at our fingertips I can’t help but ask myself how this growing World Wide Web is affecting the Communication field? Is this new and emerging technology controlling our views and ways of communicating? What are its implications, or better yet does it have any? In today’s ever so growing world of communication we have come to see that even though these new technology tools have helped us to network they have also created some problems that were non-existent. With mass media blowing up and having access to various kinds of news reports from many different sources at once, where do you know where the truth comes from? How are you able to filter out the truth from the “spam”? Are newspapers and magazines obsolete since the invention of online resources?

People today are able to sit down at their computer and look at CNN.com, NewYorkTimes.com, MSN.com, and many other sites for their daily news and current events instead of reading just one newspaper or magazine. If given the opportunity wouldn’t you rather get your facts from different sources at once rather than just one? Websites like Current, a fairly new online site that gives you the latest news buzz and access to write what you think about the topics at hand, is a great example of how technology has shaped and changed our society. Being a student studying the Communication field, this site really shows me how easy it has become to voice your opinion.

Technology today has really opened up the Communication field by allowing you to network and speak out about what you are trying to sell or promote. Whether it is a product or a client you can get it out there instantaneously. YouTube has also been a big contributor to this technology mayhem, especially in this year’s campaign election. With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both using it for videos to promote their campaign, YouTube has become a great source for information about the trail. Having thousands of viewers on a daily basis, YouTube has even gotten Obama a Grammy for one of its videos. So, is YouTube a credible source for people to go and obtain views on issues at hand? What has technology really done for the Communication field in general? What has it done to us as a society, is it controlling our thoughts, and the way we communicate? What can we see as valuable sources of information, who can we believe? How has it changed our generation and the generation to come? These are the questions that come to my mind when I think about technology and how it has shaped today’s Communication field, like a fellow blogger wrote, “The future of communications is already upon us. Get used to it.”
*Picture from Google Images