With SXSW currently underway, there is a giddiness in the air about the newest toys in technology. This excitement does not stop with the latest new gadget in the show, but also in new applications of technology in the medical field. The stethoscope is becoming obsolete, as vital signs can now be monitored and sent to a smart phones via a special band-aid. With this feature you can check more than just your email on your phone, rather you can check your blood pressure, cardiac rhythms, respiration rate, sleep patterns, and more. This wireless technology is helping free up more hospital beds, is keeping people safer, and becoming as easy as an application you simply download on your phone.

Today’s TV on Tuesday is a TED Talk by James Surowiecki, finance writer for the New Yorker and author of The Wisdom of the Crowds. He pinpoints the moments that social media became as relevant and informational as traditional news (such as the 2005 tsunami or the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes) and how it may even trump traditional media in its ability to preserve personal stories in their most direct form.  How do you get your news these days? Is it from social media (tweets, Facebook updates, and the like) or more traditional sources (such as the New York Times)?

We’re going casual with this TV on Tuesday, with a brief comedy clip about technology now, and technology in the future. It’s funny, but listen closely – it’s also thought probing (probing – that’s a scary word when thinking of tech of the future). Take a look, laugh, and let us know where you think tech is going. Will you be getting a chip implanted into your head in your lifetime?

Love watching reruns of Sex and the City, Entourage, Big Love, or Weeds–just to name a few? HBO is joining Comcast’s OnDemand Online Trial this summer enabling one to watch the channel’s epic movies and current TV shows online.  Comcast has agreed to take on this new website under its name because they want the company’s high-profile consumers, on the other hand, HBO wants the availability of Comcast’s consumers list to test out their new creation.

750 hours of content will be available provided by both networks, on Comcast.com and Fancast.com.  The website is said to include full-length episodes of current and classic television shows, movies, theatrical movies, and HBO Family programs.  Sounds like a steal? Well, don’t get too ahead of yourself, you have to already be a subscriber of HBO  or Cinemax through Comcast in order to gain access online.  But on the other hand, if you already are a paying customer of either of these three companies, there will be no additional fee for having onilne access. Will you still watch these shows unlimited on your computer when the website is up and running?  Or will you continue to relay on Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, or Epix? Do you think you will subscribe to HBO just for this access, or should it be more available to general public?

In today’s especially humorous installment of TV on Tuesday, blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin talks about the tribes we are involved in with in our daily lives.  He describes the changes that we experience every day in our social lives we experience.  The idea of tribes is a discussion about leading and connecting people with ideas.  Whether it be a spiritual or religious idea or a work/family ethics, they are ideas that bring social norms to our lives. This is a long one, but it’s worth it!  What tribes are you following and how are they affecting your life?

The media landscape has changed over time from the printing press to the telephone to radio waves that allowed TV and radio.  However, the internet is the first source of media that gives us the man-to-many conversation pattern, rather than the one-to-one pattern of the phone, or the one-to-many pattern of radio and television.  Everyone is a listener, everyone is a producer – it’s like having a phone that could turn into a radio if you pushed the right buttons.  Listen to Clay Shirky as he addresses how this powerful paradigm shift has affected how we receive news – from all around rather than the top down – and how that affects the workings of the world and the politics within it.  This is an amazing talk about the power of social media, and the power that social media endows people with.

People have been concerned since the initial creation of social media that it will disconnect us – that the digital world will replace the “real” world and as such, relationships will suffer.  Here, Stefana Broadbent argues the opposite.  She’s an ethnographer who studies human interaction, and her research shows how communication tecnology is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.  What do you think – do you think the internet enables or prevents intimacy?  How has it affected the relationships in your life?

We’ve talked a lot this week about how social media can help us in the event of a crisis, but today we’re going to talk about something else social media and the tools of the internet gives us that we’ve never had before:  access.  In the wake of the tsunami in Asia, or the earthquake in Eureka, sites like YouTube were bombarded with hand shot videos that gave us a first hand notion of what it was like to experience these events.  Before, we might see clips like this – after they were filtered through a news station or other traditional media outlet, if the media outlet even knew the clips existed at all.  Now, “normal” people all over the world can play news anchor, and the audience can get a much wider scope of all sorts of events – be them horrific or celebratory.  If knowledge is power, then social media has become one of the largest feeders of that power.  Below, we share two clips, one of the recent 6.5 earthquake in northern California, and one of the tsunami.  What has social media given you new access to in your life?

We spend a lot of time talking about social media’s many uses in business, but today we’re going to talk about a broader use for social media – a use that can actually save lives.  Erik Hersman discusses how texting can be used to deliver life saving information quickly.  Interestingly, he also discusses how people can be used to determine the veracity of information in order to filter it – an idea that, while generated in interest of saving lives, is entirely applicable for business.  Enjoy!

We welcome you to this TV on Tuesday with a mind boggling collection of social media statistics.  A brief sampling:

TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users; internet took 4; Facebook had 100 million users in less than 9 months

78% of consumers trust peer rankings; only 14% trust advertisements

24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation

88% of employers use LinkedIn as their primary way of searching for new employees

The video poses the question: Is social media a fad, or is it the biggest shift since the industrial revolution? Clearly, the clip is arguing that social media as a whole is not a fad, but it doesn’t address the particulars within the wide umbrella.  What do you think about the staying power of Twitter, of Facebook, of LinkedIn as singular entities?  The clip demonstrates how quickly things can gain popularity on the internet, which means the next big thing could be just around the corner at any time.  Our question to you then is – has the shift been towards social media as a whole, or has the shift simply opened the door to a time where everything is transient?