The New Media and Social Change

Being someone who is up to date is a necessity, especially in the last ten years. Maybe some of us who have a smart phone already unknowingly have a few minutes once the rhythm of the mobile phone display looking or waiting for the lights twinkling red marker marks there is an update message, the status or reply chat. Following the development of any gadgets like listening to the rise and fall of shares on the stock exchange, sunguh rapidly changing. Portable computer or laptop instead of foreign goods that are often coupled with a cup of coffee or tea, friends hanging out for hours, so we are no longer afraid to hang out at cafes alone. The discovery of a mobile phone with a QWERTY keypad someone else change the speed in typing an SMS and allows one to write long emails like using computers.

The development of the digital world is then seen with caution: on the one hand there is a feeling that the discovery of these technologies and tools to communicate their life easier, but on the other hand there is also a feeling that the development of this technology simply puts us in a position as a mere market. The development of this gadget makes a communication tool becomes part of your lifestyle. Packaging becomes more important than the functions needed.

Perhaps this situation is predicted by a futurologist Alvin Toffler as "future shock" in 1970. Future shock he defined as changes that are so much in so short a time that experienced not only at the individual level, but also the entire community. Structural changes that occur in society from an industrial into a super-industrial society will drown in the acceleration of technological advances and changes in social systems, so that they feel disconnected and disoriented. One that causes this is an unstoppable flow of information (information overload). A society can not run if fully controlled by the data and the computer, because in addition to cognitive abilities, emotions and affections are also needed.

In addition there are also the term digital native to refer to the current community of people who are part of a digital society. Basic question needs to be raised here: whether the intent of the digital native? Does a similar concept of Alvin Toffler or John Naisbitt on the information society? Or with the network society was initiated by Manuel Castell?

Questions arise as a result of some of the symptoms in the community, among others, the increasing needs of the community will respond quickly in the use of telecommunication services. Phone and SMS formerly considered the most rapid course, now replaced by instant messenger that saving rates and faster response. In addition, the information may now be regarded as one of the main backbone of the economy that drives the media industry. Too often we hear, that the new media, especially social networking to "maternity hospital" for solidarity actions such as coins for Prita Mulyasari or # prayforjapan (trending topic on Twitter when the big earthquake hit Japan in March 2011 last month).