"Life is being complicate even by online"

I'd like to start this entry by quoting the top headline of my JOUR314/514 classmate's blog: "Life is being complicate even by online" and "Can't we live simply?"

I had to restore my Twitter account which was abandoned for the last two years. The latest and also the only tweet I made was on October 2009.

The reason for my Twitter restoration is not because I am afraid of being left behind in the world where social media is dominant. I am not an anti-fan of social media. In contrast, I acknowledge and highly appreciate the big impact that social media brought about in transforming society and the way we communicate and interact with others. However, to acquire an appropriate understanding of social media is not easy. I find it complicated, perplexing and beyond the limited thinking capacity of myself as an individual. Simply enough, social media is a collective product of millions of brains. Can you confidently say that you understand what's going on in the heads of social media creators, developers and users? To what extent it will go forward?

I just read an online article named "Basic principles of online journalism: I is for Interactivity" and I very much agree with its main thesis "the rise of interactivity means thinking about how you can give control to your readers". I think the greatest thing about social media is that it breaks the circle that encompasses every single person to join a circle of collective individuals in the chain of the society. It is the I as "Interactivity", not the I as "I" that makes social media an appealing shared platform for all participants.

"Life is being complicate even by online" is not a critique of social media but a double-faced statement of its nature: complex and interesting.