Nowadays, it is difficult to think about the actual meaning of the “internet”. It is related to the notion of infrastructure which connects people through signals. The internet has developed significantly throughout the years; it went from a message transmitted between two universities to the manipulation of robots and still continues to expand.
These signals are now dominating the world through the creating of applications that are now known as social media platforms. As Edgerton mentioned in his book, techno-globalism is the process of the production, diffusion and transfer of technology that are becoming more International. Companies such as TikTok are benefiting from people’s addiction to technology which allows them to read users’ interests, learn more about them without noticing, and make these lives dependent on it. I have experienced this first-hand, I have downloaded TikTok for fun during quarantine, and now I am addicted to it. One cannot deny the fact that there are some disadvantages of the network, As Marina Levina said in “the network”, “power is not a possession, but rather a performance”, each user defines and interprets on his/her own the information received from the network. “Media creates a sense of identity and social belonging for its users,” people are more open to the world and learning different cultures from it, this explains the cultural homogenization. The presence of different content on your ‘For you page’ on TikTok lead to cultural homogenization; people share there traditions and stories so we are open to all type of content, that can be varied from education to people pranking each other.
When the quarantine was over and we started to go back to ‘normal life’, I noticed that the amount of time I used to consume on TikTok decreased, this is when I asked myself will TikTok survive? After the discussion we had with Rami Zeidan, and the place of TikTok in the axis graph, I remembered the notion of maintenance brought up by Edgerton in his book. One should measure the significance of a product, we should maintain it in order to prevent the technology from dying, this explains why TikTok has been widely used by people even after quarantine, it keeps on updating its version and introduce new features; such as the slitch the newest feature and working on restricting some content.
The internet is seen as a public sphere web technology that has the capacity to reestablish the public sphere, but there is an unequal flow with the developing world leading to more media influence such as unequal access for information, anonymity ,and the control of media.
Edgerton,D (2006) The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Oxford University Press; Illustrated Edition (August 2011)
Levina,M (2010) Post Global Network and Everyday Life. Peter Lang Inc.
Photo source: gulfnews.com
