WITH DUE RESPECT

"Social media is a revolution unlike any other. The swell continues. The elite certainly feel the chill.
As they should. They do not easily surrender advantage. They never have. It's so much more comfortable to keep things as they are."
Who are these elite and what are they being asked to surrender?
It's wonderful how bright your young grandchildren appear. But what are they going to do by way of honest toil when it comes down to creating a life with its necessities such as food, clothing, housing? It's unlikely their familiarity with Facebook and Twitter is going to sustain them.
Evelyn, you are out to sea on this one, completely and utterly, in a leaking boat with nary a paddle or oar.

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With respect and appreciation for the comment, you are missing my point. 

My observation is about children in general. They are not smarter than they have always been. Simply stated, they have an additional learning tool to hand. The tiger is out of the box.

My grandmother died when I was fifteen years old. My grandfather, six years later. Except for my first seven years,I grew up in their home. They were both born in the mid-eighteen hundreds. 

My mother was born in 1902. I was born in 1928. My first child  in 1949. I had seven,the last born mid sixties. I have eighteen grandchildren, and seven great-grand-children. 

Of the lives of children, generations before and after mine, I know whereof I speak.  

As a boy my grandfather walked miles to Sunday Mass in  bare feet with  boots hanging around his neck by the laces. To save leather. So the boots could be passed down through the family. 

Mass was celebrated  once a month in The King's Arms by an itinerant priest.There was no church.The pub is still there. 

Employment opportunity for young women was domestic service around the clock for little more than room and board.   My grandfather's proposal to my grandmother was the option to make a  home together.

It was the practice to buy a plot in the cemetery at the time of marriage. No-one expected to raise all of their children. There was no birth control. Childhood infectious diseases were rampant. 

They lost two of their ten. Wee Jeannie, their third child, not even a toddler, died in her mother's arms in a fit of whooping cough. 

James, their first born, on a blood soaked beach at the Dardanelles in Turkey, His twenty-two year old body ripped to shreds with machine gunfire, the newest weapon of war.

His remains are there still. 

I will not bore you with all I know of theIr lives.  Suffice to say, they could never have imagined the  change within two generations let alone six. 

So listen when I tell you. We have no idea how today's children might influence their own lives and world affairs with the World Wide Web.

There already have been changes. For example, jobs shipped overseas for lower costs  and greater profit. Recently a Royal Bank employee gave an account on social media of how his job was shipped to India  and he was obliged to train his replacement. The story went viral. Clients closed accounts and the Bank had to recant, apologize and try to get lost clientele back. Whether successful we do not know. Nor do we know if they resumed the practice of shipping jobs overseas .

What we have learned is the power of social media. The revolution is twenty years old. 

A Toronto police officer is currently on trial for murder of a disturbed youth on an empty bus.

Apparently ten officers were present. The youth was a danger to no-one. He was shot ten times by one and his lifeless body tasered by other officers. 

A passerby with a cell phone, going home from a pleasant dinner with his family, captured the horrifying event on video.  

Do we think the police officer with ten others doing nothing to stop him, would be facing murder charges without photographic evidence ?  I do not. 

Do I believe he will be found guilty of the crime on the basis of  evidence ?  I have no such confidence. 

Do I think all decent self-respecting officers have the same brutal sadistic inclinations? I do not. 

But I do believe sadistic people have power over our lives and regularly abuse their authority.

They are the entitled. ..those  who lust for power and want nothing to change.They are not solitary. 

 

Social media will change the social order. It already has. And so it should. It should continue to do so though It may not be  orderly,smooth,even, comfortable or particularly enjoyable. 

Looking forward to hearing from you.