Are Facebook and Twitter Living History of the Masses?

I am a huge history fan.  While I also believe in the Law of Attraction and recently read something that disturbed me…studying history leads us to repeat it because we have put attention towards it. Hmmm…that bothered me because I believe studying history gives you a much broader perspective on where we’ve been and where we’re going.  I view history as a lesson in resiliency of the human spirit.  We Shall Overcome seems to be the most pervasive theme throughout all of history and it makes today’s challenges seem less daunting if no less important.  Facebook and Twitter may have forever changed the way we study history.

I keep thinking that for the first time in recorded history social media is a vehicle to record the life and times of the average person. Facebook and Twitter have given us a platform to speak with our own voices, to chronicle our lives and Facebook’s Timeline gives us the actual outline to create a living history of who we are. In times past, it was those in power who wrote and whose work was passed on. We got rare glimpses of ordinary lives through these writings and through some letters that survived. But for the most part, the history we learn is the history we are supposed to learn. It is the lives of the masses whose voices we do not hear over the years of centuries past.

Now with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter we are creating and chronicling our lives with regard to the most dramatic events to the most mundane.  What we eat, what we drink, what we do for leisure, what we think about politics, fashion, the weather are all voiced on a daily basis and presumably committed to prosperity.

Those generations that come after us will see who we were.  Through Facebook and Twitter they will get a glimpse as to what made us happy, angry, sad, excited and what we loved. It is a living history that follows our society day by day.  It isn’t always pretty but it is real and it is being lived by each one of us everyday.

Last week I wrote about LinkedIn, Facebook and Death.  The idea that our social media profiles live on after we do.  Perhaps that is the true beauty of this new technology.  It is a living time capsule which will unearth our time in history as it is lived by those whose lives are not necessarily the famous or powerful.