Does Technology Narrow Our View?

A couple months ago, Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, wrote a column for TIME entitled, Technology's Power to Narrow Our View. It begins: Commencement season is upon us, when students across the nation make familiar pledges to go forth and change the world. The explosion of social networks on the Internet--Facebook users have affiliated with more than 80,000 causes--has emboldened them to believe their generation will make change. But does new technology make it more or less likely that young people today will commit themselves to do something for others? She argues: "Sure, viral YouTube videos of global conflicts and tragedies will occasionally find an audience, and movements may grow up around iconic new-media images as they did around the old. But... [read full story]