It comes as no surprise that social networks can offer a wonderful opportunity to express your views and even to transform the world. Think of how politicians found a way to get their messages across through Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Remember the Yes, you can campaign?? Or think of celebrities using these platforms to manipulate their already distorted image or sometimes to destroy it altogether 😉
For all of them, Internet access is easy; they all have computers connected to the net or even whole infrastructures to mold their target audiences as they please. Ok then, being politically correct, to get their point across 😉
However, today we would like to pay a little homage to those people with difficulties when communicating online either because of lack of resources, economic problems, and so forth and how through imagination, all these obstacles were overcome. For example, see how Yoani Sánchez, an incredibly talented Cuban writer, has made true the saying Imagination gone wild! Yoani found a way of publishing her own blog, Generation Y, despite the censorship in her country. How? Well, by recording her webcasts in tapes and giving them away to people with no resources, by asking people to create Twitter accounts with the names of Cuban bloggers from their mobiles phones and then resending the SMS messages sent by them, by sharing the very few allowed Internet connections with others, etc.
The same situation is also present in Africa. As Hindu Mint Ainina, editor of the French edition of Calame, an independent weekly magazine several times banned by the Mauritanian government, explains when talking about the use of Internet in this continent: ‘As for the question of whether illiteracy is a barrier to Internet access, you soon realize that this problem is very quickly overtaken by events. There is always somebody in the cybercafés who can type messages for those who cannot write…’ ‘… Or Development associations in villages where there are no telephones communicate via the Internet. Either they go up to the capital city, or they leave a message with a driver who goes into town and sends e-mails while he picks up the post.’ (read the full article at Unesco.org)
Even corporations have devised innovative means to bring the net closer to the people! Yes, you got it! Google have developed a really fun and brilliant initiative which will leave you speechless!
Check out the Google Internet bus!!
Can you tell us of more examples that exemplify how imagination can exploit the vast potential of social networks?