Various forms of social
communications media ushered in globalization. Gone where the days of mass
media, where mass of people gathered together to hear and see something from a
television or radio. Today, through computers, cellphones, ipads with internet
connection, a single person can access an audio-video, text-graphics, email and
the likes, via FaceBook, Youtube, Yahoo. Means of communication are now modernized,
indeed making the world globalized; a global village.
When I was in kindergarten, I
used to sing the song It’s a small world
after all. The world then pertains only to our purok, where I could almost
name my playmates. The real (whole) world then is simply incomprehensible, its
actual dimension, and the billions of people living on it. I could not image
where my relatives in America lives, and how do they go there. Communications
with them happened only once a year, during Christmas season. It was through
the postcards they sent that I came to know their place, the customs and
traditions, the kind of clothes they wore. The messages they sent then were
meaningful and kind, with carefully chosen words, for their space is limited.
Thus, every postcard we received is treated with care, for one feels the
dedication poured in by your love ones in preparing them. Communication, then,
via mails took time; from preparation of the letters and postcards, to sending
of the mail. In the process, it allows
the formation of values; for example the virtue of patience is formed as one
waits for the letters to arrive, the poetry and passion in writing is encourage
as one choose words to paint the message he would like to convey between the
lines. With all the hurdles one needs to pass in order to communicate to the
other person on the other side of the globe, it was difficult to imagine the
real physical world as a small world.
Today, the world had become a
small world. The various means of social communication enable one to
communicate to a person thousands of miles away from him. I have two siblings
in the Abu Dhabi, in the Middle East. Should we had lived in the 90’s, we could
had communicated via mails, but it is already 2016. We do Skype whenever we
wanted to see and talk to them, via video call. We maintain a FaceBook group
message, where we as a family can group chat and send message to each other. It
is like holding a meeting together, for one is informed of what the other is
doing through the message he posts via FaceBook messenger. Through these modern
means of social communications (Skype, FB), communicating to persons becomes
easy, and makes the world truly a small world. However, the values formed in
the past, became optional. One may not choose the words he uses, after all he
has unlimited space to write on. Patience is totally diminished as one’s
message can be sent via click of the mouse; instant message. The vanishing
sight of the virtue of the past, gives way, nevertheless, to the dawning of new
values; such as giving a great emphasis on family ties, openness in the family
in showing concern and care for them, volunteerism, participation to communal
advocacy, desire to be informed. Values, after all, are not totally diminish,
today, but emphasis among them shifts.
Skype, FaceBook, Youtube, and
other modern forms of social communication media, truly, made a small world
possible; a globalized world. The values of communication, found in the past, may
seemed to be relegated to bygone era of mails and postcards. But truth be told,
modern means of communication give rise to new values. However, unlike before
that man was left with no choice but to form such values, man today has to
choose to form them in him, or else he will be formed by these modern means in
a way he might not desire.
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