Technologically Connected: Shaping our Global Relationships Introduction At midnight Mountain Time, an instant message pops up from a recent online acquaintance from a Universal Time zone. A speech bubble holds a shy text, “May I have a minute of your time?” The two recently found a budding friendship through a virtual online community. Though the conversation lasted until sunrise for each of them, the laughter, insightful exchanges and mutual interest in their diverse cultures resonated a new energy through the next day. Translation apps helped through language barriers to get to heart and soul similarities. A unique and life-long bond is formed. Technology provided a thoroughfare to forge a friendship that in an earlier era would be impossible. This is a beautiful side of our worldwide interactions via the Internet. If only it were that easy for us to generate that kind of mutual acceptance on a larger scale. The possibilities are there and so are the desires of many, but it is not without complexities. This paper is an examination of some of those complications showing up in our fast growing, technically capable communication. Review of the Literature History of Public Internet Access History has potential for forecasting future. The progression and growth of the Internet can be traced back to the late sixties, but hit highpoints at certain in history. The first web browser was released in 1993, for use by the general public (Chapman, 2009). The statistics of worldwide Internet users have grown from less than one percent in 1995 to over forty percent in twenty years. According to Internet Live Stats, China uses the greatest amount of the total worldwide Internet at nearly twenty-two percent, while the United States is in second at only
Media", 2014). This is a futile sample of the risk social media misinformation can lead to. Hysteria is hard to reign in after unleashed. Zeynep Tufekci, Techno-sociologist, about online social activism. She explains that involvement is easy to organize through social media, but hard to win. Tufekci shows the power of Twitter in a protest she studied. While this Gezi park demonstration was happening, CNN Turkey was censoring it by showing a penguin documentary; however, CNN International was broadcasting it. One upset viewer took a picture of the side-by-side screens and Tweeted it. Furthermore, those present at the protest were taking pictures, posting them to Twitter and undermining the censorship as well. The news was being passed through social media. Tufekci points out the multitudes of stories across Italy, Spain, Greece, Hong Kong and further across the world; all using the Internet to publicize the protests. Tufekci enlightens the topic by pointing out how “their outcomes are not really proportional to the size and energy they inspired” (Tufekci, 2014). She believes that the values once used in protests like the 1955 Civil Rights protest are lacking. She feels that, while efforts and issues are worthy of protest, the effectiveness is “in that capacity to work together, think together collectively, which can only be built over time with a lot of work” (Tufekci, 2014). A prime example of this is Occupy Wall Street, a protest that began in 2011 from in a small plaza called Zuccotti Park, in Lower Manhattan. This obscure movement caught media wildfire over 951 cities in 82 countries. The message stated the inequality of the 99% robbed by the 1% of millionaires and billionaires (Earle, 2012, p. 6). It inspired protests, walkouts and arrests without any known demands or goals. While it was an historical and memorable event, it did not obtain any long-term objectives. As evidence shows many times over, the engine of social media is