CGTN — The most downloaded IOS APP - why the obsession with Tik Tok videos?

...Douyin in China boasts of billions of hits each day. Its international edition has recently topped off Whatsapp, becoming the most downloaded IOS application on the market in the first quarter of 2018.…

Tik Tok videos are typically 15 seconds long, tuned to repurposed, hit music and featured special effects....

Zhi [Ying, senior Director with Tik Tok] said the app's popularity builds on what users, typically under 35, made and submitted themselves, as they've taken the format to be an essential way of expression.

Zhi told CGTN that short-video is the new way of expression and communication now, just as important as texts and photos….

Ecns
The most downloaded IOS APP - why the obsession with Tik Tok videos?
CGTN

Emerging Technology — First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society

Not just e-commerce that's changing the world. 

Social networks are proliferating and expanding, and it is affecting how people meet. An obvious way to test this is through investigating online dating, for which there is ample data. Online dating sites are obviously targeted at people meeting. This has implications for many other social media venues as well.

More evidence that the Internet is changing everything. Distance is shrinking, not only in terms of separation in space but also in terms of separation of networks. And interfaces are proliferating.

This article examines some of the effects observed.

MIT Technological Review

First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society
Emerging Technology from the arXiv

Solidarity Economics

Defining Solidarity Economics

But what exactly is this "solidarity economy approach"? For some theorists of the movement, it begins with a redefinition of economic space itself. The dominant neoclassical story paints the economy as a singular space in which market actors (firms or individuals) seek to maximize their gain in a context of scarce resources. These actors play out their profit-seeking dramas on a stage wholly defined by the dynamics of the market and the state. Countering this narrow approach, solidarity economics embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual gain. The economic activity validated by neoclassical economists represents, in this view, only a tiny fraction of human efforts to meet needs and fulfill desires.

What really sustains us when the factories shut down, when the floodwaters rise, or when the paycheck is not enough? In the face of failures of market and state, we often survive by self-organized relationships of care, cooperation, and community. Despite the ways in which capitalist culture generates and mobilizes a drive toward competition and selfishness, basic practices of human solidarity remain the foundation upon which society and community are built. Capitalism's dominance may, in fact, derive in no small part from its ability to co-opt and colonize these relationships of cooperation and mutual aid....

At its core, solidarity economics rejects one-size-fits-all solutions and singular economic blueprints, embracing instead a view that economic and social development should occur from the bottom up, diversely and creatively crafted by those who are most affected. As Marcos Arruda of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network stated at the World Social Forum in 2004, "a solidarity economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual and a collective. 

Similarly, contrasting the solidarity economy approach to historical visions of the "cooperative commonwealth," Henri de Roche noted that "the old cooperativism was a utopia in search of its practice and the new cooperativism is a practice in search of its utopia." Unlike many alternative economic projects that have come before, solidarity economics does not seek to build a singular model of how the economy should be structured, but rather pursues a dynamic process of economic organizing in which organizations, communities, and social movements work to identify, strengthen, connect, and create democratic and liberatory means of meeting their needs.

Success will only emerge as a product of organization and struggle. "Innovative practices at the micro level can only be viable and structurally effective for social change," said Arruda, "if they interweave with one another to form always-broader collaborative networks and solidarity chains of production-finance-distribution-consumption-education-communication."

This is, perhaps, the heart of solidarity economics—the process of networking diverse structures that share common values in ways that strengthen each. Mapping out the economic terrain in terms of "chains of solidarity production," organizers can build relationships of mutual aid and exchange between initiatives that increase their collective viability. At the same time, building relationships between solidarity-based enterprises and larger social movements builds increased support for the solidarity economy while allowing the movements to meet some of the basic needs of their participants, demonstrate viable alternatives, and thus increase the power and scope of their transformative work.

Dollars & Sense — Real World Economics
Other Economies are Possible!

Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity

Ethan Miller

Paul Mason — How Financial Crisis, Economic Inequality, Social Media, and More Brought Revolutions in 2011--and Changed Us Forever

Journalist Paul Mason covered the uprisings of 2011 as they occurred. His new book "Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere," explains why they all happened at once.

Read it at AlterNet
How Financial Crisis, Economic Inequality, Social Media, and More Brought Revolutions in 2011--and Changed Us Forever
Interview of Paul Mason by Sarah Jaffe

This trend is gaining steam globally and is becoming a transforming force as it gathers momentum among international youth now linked through social media and networking.

This can be understood in terms of Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism, which is the ploy of using crisis or manufacturing it in order to force political and economic change that would be impossible through elections under more normal circumstances. The reason is Margaret Thatcher's TINA (there is no alternative).

The push pack is coming from angry youth, who see their future being stolen from them by a greedy elite using a false pretext. 

See also the "I Don't Pay" call to action on You Tube

Guardian lets public contribute to shaping the news

A newspaper has thrown open its office doors, let the readers stride in, and invited them to peer over reporters’ shoulders — digitally, at least.The website of the left-leaning Guardian daily is publishing its ‘newslist’ — a schedule of stories its journalists are working on — and asking readers to help shape the coverage by contacting its reporters on Twitter....

Read the rest at Raw Story

The Guardian turns readers into newshounds

by Agence France-Presse

This may seem like a small and rather insignificant event, but it is actually a big step forward toward the extension of open source, distributed systems, interactivity, and social networking into other area than the Internet and IT. This is the future of business models, and smart companies are going to recognize it. Those that don't will go the way of the buggy whip makers.