Can Internet’s Electronic Wailing Wall Double as Life Preserver?
Social networks have become an electronic wailing wall where humanity shares its pain, grief and jubilation in a cathartic rush. The potency of mass therapy has been demonstrated time and again in our response to extraordinary events such as 9/11, Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to the White House and most recently, the untimely death of pop star Michael Jackson. Twitter and Google were over the top, systems crashed and the boundless Web hit bottom in a torrent of responses. A column by Dean Takahashi on Venture Beat in the days following Jackson’s death triggered questions about the broader implications of the Internet’s flawed performance. Could the Internet prove more effective and reliable rallying people and resources in a time of national crisis? Could the Internet master an emergency call-to-action in dire circumstances, or would it simply continue to serve as a repository for emotional vetting? Does the Internet have the capacity and technical chops to function as a universal life
