10th MARCH 2012 - LECTURE 2

Today I participated in the Chicks in Pink Fun Run, meaning I had to wake up at FIVE IN THE MORNING!!! Which is you know, early. The run (and when I say run that can be construed as run or walk or run/walk or ride if you're one of the babies in the stroller being pushed by your mum. Pile up!!!) raised money for the Mater Hill Hospital and awareness for breast cancer. However, seeing all those women, and their husbands and children, getting up super early just to do a walk made me think; why were they all really there? Was it because first and foremost they wanted to raise money for the Mater Hill Hospital? Or was it because all their friends were running it so they had to run too? Maybe it was because they really wanted to raise awareness for breast cancer. But then again it could have been that they just wanted to get an early morning run done: physical fitness is the most important thing.

And seeing all this unfold around me made me think of KONY 2012. Oh great, I hear you say, another one of THOSE people. But no, what it made me think about was whether or not the 69 676 440 views of the Kony 2012 video on youtube were made by people who actually care or by people whose friends saw the video and recommend it, or by people who need to convince others that they give a damn about other people apart from themselves. Are we all just watching it because of the hype?

Social media, Web 2.0 and the idea that we use the internet merely for the social aspect really makes me wonder if being social is all humanity has ever really been good at? I mean, think, really think about it: We evolved from a species that remained together in groups. Indigenous peoples hunted and remained together as tribes. We've always been a social people. The loner was always the one who was miserable, never happy. With the development of Web 2.0, the social internet, where information is transferred and trended faster than Kim Kardashian's marriage, are we merely involving ourselves into online connectivity because that's what everyone else is doing? Or is it because we need to?

With the development of Web 3.0, which centres on the individual, will our other social aspects, such as events like the Chicks in Pink walk, just crumble around us? Or will it not matter because everyone was only there for the fitness part of it?

Will we all end up like the loner guy?

Gosh. How philosophical of me.



Image available: http://jharyantho.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/chicks-in-pink-fun-runwalk/