New media and social media are developing so fast. Today, there is an APP for every need and they appear like mushrooms in autumn before you can even think about their utility.
The Invisalign App
For instance, the online connection provided by the Invisalign APP is something useful but not necessary. It is a marketing strategy. Receiving feedback on your moving teeth may be useful if it comes from some expert of the field, otherwise where is the point? Our narcissism and will to appear is really of this proportion? We are starting to rely too much on technology.
Again from the Big Bang Data Exhibition, the selfie notion is getting too far. The quantity of selfies uploaded everyday through all social media is uncountable and it is evident in the installation selfiecity London from Lev Manovich and Moritz Stefaner. Could we represent a city by using these data?
Collage of selfiecity London at the Big Bang Data Exhibition
Surely, cities are the places where these transformations happen. “Cities are where the majority of human activities has always been” (Neal, 2013, p.1). In this century the human activities run around new technologies. Mobile devices rule cities more than ever. Therefore, the question of accessibility is a constant unresolved issue. Having access is having power, being able to access it, is the new knowledge.
In fact the thin line between what is legal and what is illegal in hackering data, in the access to open data and in data knowledge are only starting points. Cooperation between citizens in a larger or smaller scale may help comprehend data. Platforms like Open4Citizens wishes to move forward by legging people collaborate together in the data controlling with a ‘bottom-up approach’ that responds to their needs (Hemment, D. & Townsend, A., 2013, pp.1-3).
Nowadays cities are always alive and awake; is no longer only New York the city that never sleeps but any city because social media had democratized this statement.
Classic New York from the Empire State Building at night
References
Neal, Z., 2013, The Connected City, How Networks are Shaping the Modern Metropolis, New York and London, Routledge
Hemment, D. & Townsend, A. Ed. (2013) Smart Citizens, pp1-3. Future Everything Publications. Available at: http://futureeverything.org/ideas/smart-citizens-publication/ [accessed 12 May 2016].
Open4Citizens (2016). Available at: http://open4citizens.eu/ [accessed 12 May 2016].
Big Bang Data Exhibition in Somerset House, London [online] Available at: <http://bigbangdata.somersethouse.org.uk/> [Accessed February 2016].
Invisalign UK. Available at: www.invisalign.co.uk [Accessed 9 May 2016].