Social(ist) Media

What a difference a week makes; were I to have written about this Thing on the day when it was posted, I would have mistakenly exhorted the virtues of social media, gambolling in joy through its verdant pastures of communication and collaboration, smelling the fragrant daisies of community-building; now, I have been put right, and can see that social media is a post-apocalyptic concrete wasteland which requires strict control lest the knotweed communities which grow therein start to spread and choke what life is left from the penuried serfs of Albion. Can we seriously risk allowing thousands of communities of professional practice to exist when these very same tools can be used by ruffians to orchestrate vandalism and civil unrest? Enlightened peers in China and Syria have shown us the way; throw up great walls and hunt down those dissidents who persist in playing amongst the wreckage of so-called 'freedom of expression'

I can't keep that tone up forever; many people have already done a much better job of pillorying the ridiculous statements which Cameron has made regarding new media technologies over the last week. I'm not the biggest evangelist for social media, but it is clear that the myriad good purposes to which Twitter and its ilk are utilised far outweigh any potential anarchist-organisation angle. Over the last week, my network of library folk has expanded on the several services thus far discussed within the 23 Things, making me feel plugged in to a wider community of like-minded individuals even whilst I toil away in this fluorescent tomb, the walls battened against the inchoate rage of a generation raised at the twin teats of MTV Cribs and Jeremy Kyle, to a score of gangsta-rap which has eaten away their reasoning ability like parasitic worms to the extent that they forget to cover their faces when attacking the local Dixons.

I'm done now.