New Interactive Media - Task 3: Societal and cultural transformation engendered by digital and media technology

Digital and media technology have been so present in my life for the past decade that I tend to almost forget how my life used to be before this technological revolution took place. The computers' communicative capabilities have shaped the world we live in and have, without any doubt, changed the way I used to learn, express myself, recreate, work and socialize, among other activities.

Personally, I find the practicality of communication and interaction over long distances and among ample numbers of people to be the most important aspect of the digital era. 

Without a doubt, it was this form of interacting and communicating that allowed me to move from my hometown in Portugal, to Tallinn, Estonia, in order to study a master, while still working on my projects and meeting with my boss, colleagues and clients, even though we are all in different locations. New media such as collaborative project management applications and online business meetings tools help me everyday to make this situation a reality.

The possibility of being constantly in touch with my family and friends definitely fostered my decision to move away from home. Tools such as Skype, Facebook, Google Calendar and Gmail are key in keeping the long-distance barely noticeable. These new media social tools, which mostly appeared during the Web 2.0 phenomena, have also improved the way me and my friends and family create and disseminate social events.
In my experience I have also noticed how these social tools and networks are being used as a means to raise awareness among communities about important subjects as global poverty, humans and animals' rights, among other important topics. People can now easily create and spread important messages, which ultimately influence the way people perceived the world, think and behave. Hopefully, this will improve the "global village" we all live in.

We are now an "active audience", we can produce content in creative and aesthetic ways. We can also remix content, using either new or existing data, which allow us to be more productive and creative than it was ever possible, contributing, in my opinion, to a faster evolution of our society.
"Personal media" such as our mobile phones, e-mail, instant messengers, blogs and social networks allow us to share our creations and participate actively in our community, in an accelerated, agile and easy manner, which simply wasn't possible to achieve before.

Lastly, I would like to remark that, even though I believe these changes to be mostly positive, there are also some issues and implications to be dealt with in this information age we live in. 
For me, one of the most acute implications is that I sometimes I feel that we may not be ready to live in this "information overload" times, which also bring along attention fragmentation and constant multitasking (which is believed to ultimately damage creativity and productivity - the brain is designed to work in one task at a time - http://www.ilkap.gov.my/download/media/recivering.pdf). The amounts of data and knowledge that are thrown at us, coming from an insurmountable large number of sources, are immense. Even I, that practically grew up in this world, feel overwhelmed and in need to disconnect sometimes. 

Articles read for this task:

• Harrison, T.M. & Barthel B. (2009). Wielding new media in Web 2.0: exploring the history of engagement with the collaborative construction of media products. New Media & Society 11(1&2).
• Hjarvard, S. (2008). The mediatization of society. Nordicom Review 29(2).
• Lüders, M. (2008). Conceptualising personal media. New media and society, 10(5), 683-702.