facebook - how many of us are spending time on one or the other social networking website? for various reasons ranging from friendship to dating to professional.. i trust this network enough to find me a job, to cure my neck sprain, to keep me updated about who's getting married to whom.. and so on.
wikipedia - why do we trust what's written on wikipedia? agreed that we do give it a discount of error, but still it has become out standard defining source of information.
internet in general - why do we trust that google search will give us the significantly accurate information? why do we trust in purchasing items of eBay?
reviews - why do we believe in reviews posted on imdb or other such websites? and take that one step further to reviews about gadgets, devices, even vehicles..
and if i go to controversial areas -
capitalism - as my economics prof said - why is it that the gains are for the capitalists while the losses are for the socialists? why did the government step in to save the banks that were apparently too big to fail? why was greece so sure that germany will bail it out?
social business - more and more trends are emerging in social business. its no longer philanthropy, or working in refugee camps, its now business. for profit organisations, Impact investors, Social ROI, ecological ways of urbanization, to name a few..
I believe that we are in the midst of a revolution. we are beginning to trust the knowledge of the masses. and the internet has proved to be the medium for this. what is accepted and verified by the masses is acceptable to us. all the examples i gave above have this commonality. and thats is why this is different from the social phenomenon of the past. yes there existed such social phenomenon in the past as well - libraries, festival celebrations, army, even the parliament is such an example, but these were not verified by the masses. at least not as much as they are now. its like a new democracy- a democracy of knowledge..
i also came across this interesting thought - of that capitalism leads to communism which leads to socialism. and this order is necessary as elimination is a pre-requisite for evolution. we accept the ideas of those whom we believe are equal or above us in thoughts. and capitalism is the way to reach that stage of equals. and then social ownership of property makes sense, because each one has proved his right to having that share. its like a class of mba students who have been selected after a competition and then among them they have access to equal opportunities.
i will leave you with another example - TED - why are we coming together and sharing our ideas about change? what is the magic of social networks? according to this talk below, it is the difference between graphite and diamond. the carbon atom that these two consists of is the same, but the arrangement is different. just compare the carbon to a human and the arrangemet to his social network. are you graphite or are you a diamond?
for the whole talk visit:
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