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)?

Technology is booming.

With technology’s growth and advancement increasing at an exponential rate, every month there is a new product to know about and want. This progress is leaving TV’s, desktops, landlines, paper charts, and large incision surgeries obsolete. People want the newest, flashiest, easiest, and fastest toys, creating an environment of survival of the fittest.

Evolution has been occurring over billions of years, creating RNA then DNA, cognition, motor coordination, and consciousness. From there, humans were able to invent the wheel, a written language, and technology. Now, however, our invention of new technological products is changing the traditional natural selection into technological selection. Technology has become so intertwined into our survival, with its ability to screen for diseases and treat people, that the concept of natural selection is no longer natural. A concept called ‘reverse biology’ is allowing technology to help save lives. This is seen by early detection and therefore treatment of diseases due to the ease of genetic sequencing, in vitro fertilization due to precise microscopes and techniques,  and treatment of certain diseases via gene targeting possible due to numerous collaborative advancements made within biotechnology. Now, people who would not have survived, can and people who would not have reproduce, will.

This progress is showing no sign of stopping as technology grows upon itself at an accelerating rate. No longer are the weak filtered out of society, rather it is all about survival of the fittest new technological toy.  These toys, in turn, are changing the course of our own survival.

[via TED]

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.

Welcome to our first installment of TV on Tuesday, where we bring you our favorite clips from around the web.  They could be funny, they could informative, they could be irreverent or simply irrelevant…but every Tuesday, they’ll be here, waiting for you to click and view.  Today, we bring you Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, as he gives a Ted Talk on the naming of Mister Splashy Pants.  While this talk is certainly humorous (and how could a talk about Mister Splashy Pants not be?), at its heart is a message about how social media changes how we process information.  When using the web to convey the message, we are essentially setting it free; we are relinquishing the control that newspapers, television and other, older forms of information conveyance have both used and relied on for years.  So, without further adieu, we set this clip free and bring you:  How to Make a Splash in Social Media, with Alexis Ohanian and, of course, Mister Splashy Pants.