As society progresses and improves, the role and impact technology has on our lives will increase. Technology has even altered the way people look to spark change. In the 1900s, media was nowhere near as complex as it is today. Radios, and later on television, were the main source for broadcasting one’s opinion on an issue in hopes of inciting change. Even though these forms of mass media are considered limited by today’s standards, they still got the job done and allowed people to spark change if they had enough support. In the present day, the new forms of media that were not present in the past has made it even more possible for the average person to have a say in how their government is run. In order to see just how much of a role this new technology had, I decided to examine the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The Occupy Wall Street combined the methods of the past such as protests and sit ins and the technology of the present to create a movement that sparked debate nationwide. Similar to protests of the past, the Occupy Wall Street Movement managed to get people who believed in the goals of the movement to stage a sit in in Zuccotti Park of New York City. The people involved in the Occupy Wall Street even put up tents and stayed in the park despite the weather. Even though they were consistently besieged by the New York Police Department, the people involved in the movement still held their ground.

This movement took their mission a step further by capitalizing on social media. Through websites like Facebook and Twitter, Occupy Wall Street was able to spread the discussion to people who couldn’t physically be a part of the movement. These people were still able to keep up with what was going on through live feeds, pictures, posts and news broadcasts. Social media also helped connect the Occupy Wall Street movement with other “Occupy” movements that were going all over the world. The use of social media helped the Occupy Wall Street expand its outreach to other states, even other countries. This would have been extremely hard to achieve in the past where this technology was just not present.

Over the years, Occupy Wall Street has utilized the new technologies of the present even more. Occupy Wall Street has been able to use mass email, accompanied by social media, to inform more people about upcoming rallies. One of the more interesting uses of the new technology available is how Occupy Wall Street has been able to use crowd mapping to inform people about where the most cops are. By doing this, less people are likely to be confronted by the police and the rallies could go on with fewer police disruptions. The usage of crowd mapping for this purpose has allowed to movement to survive and still have an impact on society. The Occupy Wall Street movement broke the boundaries put on previous movements by capitalizing on the advances made in technology over the past decades.

References

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304459804577285793322092600

http://www.shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20