Trillions of lines of software "code" and leaves of tobacco folded in pieces of paper that kill people seem to me as the most unlikely allies.
But Web 2.0 and cigarettes are connected, intrinsically, to each other. How? It starts with acknowledgment of the fact that the internet is one of the most powerful tools accessed by billions of human beings today. The transformation of the internet, from one that served very functional and technical purposes in yesterday-decades, to the personalized, social-network-based interactive form (Web 2.0) it has taken today, has made it an integral part of human society. Today, humans spend more time on the internet for leisure, work, information-gathering and entertainment, than ever before.
This extreme dependence has enabled the internet, more so the content floating on the internet, to influence our lives to a great extent. Like it has in most other spheres of human activity, the internet has changed our perception of cigarette smoking.
Coincidence?
The advent of Web 2.0 and the decline of the image of smoking have coincidental correlations. What do I mean by the decline of the image of smoking? Today, for certain, smoking is, across every culture and society, labeled and considered a bad activity to indulge in. In previous decades, a smoker was considered cool and classy (refer to the TV show Madmen which depicts the 1960s tobacco-addict American society.) That has changed; and the internet has had a big role in inducing that change.
But a question begs to be asked: While this transformation of how society perceives smoking has been gradual and a decades'-long phenomenon, the advent of Web 2.0 began only a little more than a decade ago. How can there be a casual correlation between the two?
Social Effects
For all its merits and demerits, Web 2.0 has had one seismic effect: It has given a voice to every human being that can be echoed across every corridor of society. One no longer needs to be a prominent personality to air his or her views via the traditional mediums of newspaper, television and/or book-authorship.
It will be fair to say that, between the 1970s and 1990s, most understood the negative implications of smoking cigarettes, but were not aware of the scale at which everybody else in society understood this fact. Newspaper columns, television debates and the publishing of books have been mostly reserved for the elite, who are usually unable to reflect the true intent and thinking of the common folk at large.
With the prominence of Web 2.0, however, common people have had the chance to air their views. And air their views they have (in the millions and billions): On blogs, Facebook statuses, emails, twitter feeds, youtube videos, vimeos, podcasts, and so on. Now everybody knows that everybody knows cigarette smoking is a bad habit -- there is no uncertainty around this fact. The internet has been largely responsible for creating this worldwide consensus.
For instance look at this heart-wrenching blog created by the family members of a deceased smoker, from St. Petersburg, Russia. WHY QUIT. Without the internet, an Indian national living in the United States of America would have likely never been able to read this Russian story. Honestly, it has gone as far as to inspire me to quit smoking. Without the internet, I'm not sure I could trust traditional media to portray Bryan's story to me halfway across the world (and rightly so, there are logistical and time limitations).
Further, look at this informative video on the kind of treacherous effect that 400 cigarettes can have on the human body.
This is really what the Web has enabled humans to do. A researcher in Japan has produced a video that is now being seen by upwards of 400,000 people in America, Czech Republic and other parts of the world (as noted from the stats page of the video). Similarly, search for simply "cigarette smoking" on Youtube (not even a biased keyword like "bad effects of cigarette smoking") and you will see a barrage of videos made by other fellow human beings from random corners of the world sharing their stories and telling a viewer why and how cigarette smoking is horrible.
Why just restrict to videos and blogs, look at Twitter as well. Twitter, I believe, is the best gauge of the common-man's opinion. So, go to Twitter and just search for the word "cigarettes" and see what common people have to say about the habit of smoking. The likelihood that a seemingly rational person would tweet glorifying the act of cigarette smoking is unsurprisingly very low. There are thousands of tweets, in fact, denouncing cigarette smoking. Look at the tweets I found just 7 minutes ago:
This extreme dependence has enabled the internet, more so the content floating on the internet, to influence our lives to a great extent. Like it has in most other spheres of human activity, the internet has changed our perception of cigarette smoking.
Coincidence?
The advent of Web 2.0 and the decline of the image of smoking have coincidental correlations. What do I mean by the decline of the image of smoking? Today, for certain, smoking is, across every culture and society, labeled and considered a bad activity to indulge in. In previous decades, a smoker was considered cool and classy (refer to the TV show Madmen which depicts the 1960s tobacco-addict American society.) That has changed; and the internet has had a big role in inducing that change.
But a question begs to be asked: While this transformation of how society perceives smoking has been gradual and a decades'-long phenomenon, the advent of Web 2.0 began only a little more than a decade ago. How can there be a casual correlation between the two?
Social Effects
For all its merits and demerits, Web 2.0 has had one seismic effect: It has given a voice to every human being that can be echoed across every corridor of society. One no longer needs to be a prominent personality to air his or her views via the traditional mediums of newspaper, television and/or book-authorship.
It will be fair to say that, between the 1970s and 1990s, most understood the negative implications of smoking cigarettes, but were not aware of the scale at which everybody else in society understood this fact. Newspaper columns, television debates and the publishing of books have been mostly reserved for the elite, who are usually unable to reflect the true intent and thinking of the common folk at large.
With the prominence of Web 2.0, however, common people have had the chance to air their views. And air their views they have (in the millions and billions): On blogs, Facebook statuses, emails, twitter feeds, youtube videos, vimeos, podcasts, and so on. Now everybody knows that everybody knows cigarette smoking is a bad habit -- there is no uncertainty around this fact. The internet has been largely responsible for creating this worldwide consensus.
For instance look at this heart-wrenching blog created by the family members of a deceased smoker, from St. Petersburg, Russia. WHY QUIT. Without the internet, an Indian national living in the United States of America would have likely never been able to read this Russian story. Honestly, it has gone as far as to inspire me to quit smoking. Without the internet, I'm not sure I could trust traditional media to portray Bryan's story to me halfway across the world (and rightly so, there are logistical and time limitations).
Further, look at this informative video on the kind of treacherous effect that 400 cigarettes can have on the human body.
This is really what the Web has enabled humans to do. A researcher in Japan has produced a video that is now being seen by upwards of 400,000 people in America, Czech Republic and other parts of the world (as noted from the stats page of the video). Similarly, search for simply "cigarette smoking" on Youtube (not even a biased keyword like "bad effects of cigarette smoking") and you will see a barrage of videos made by other fellow human beings from random corners of the world sharing their stories and telling a viewer why and how cigarette smoking is horrible.
Why just restrict to videos and blogs, look at Twitter as well. Twitter, I believe, is the best gauge of the common-man's opinion. So, go to Twitter and just search for the word "cigarettes" and see what common people have to say about the habit of smoking. The likelihood that a seemingly rational person would tweet glorifying the act of cigarette smoking is unsurprisingly very low. There are thousands of tweets, in fact, denouncing cigarette smoking. Look at the tweets I found just 7 minutes ago:
And then, of course, there are countless email exchanged between friends and family members that deride smoking. I remember sharing with my parents how I started smoking lightly, off-late, and my entire family gently pounced on me. I received so many encouraging emails from everyone on how and why it is important to quit smoking. And that has really helped. I know that there are folks who care for me and that in itself provides motivation needed to quit the habit.
Yes, trillions of lines of software "code" and leaves of tobacco folded in pieces of paper that kill people are, indeed, the most unlikely allies, but allies nonetheless..
In reality, it seems that the increased availability and accessibility of technology has no only allowed for many to quit smoking, but has also caused equally as many to take up smoking as well.
ReplyDeleteOne new technological innovation that has made an impact is video-blogs or "vlogs", which allow people who are struggling with quitting smoking to share their experience with others who are also in the same predicament who may be able to provide helpful support or advice. This creates a network of people working together for the same cause, which has often proven to be much stronger than nicotine gum or patches alone.
Yet, new technology has provided endless mediums for cigarette corporations to advertise their products to larger amounts of people. Although there are restrictions on how and to whom they may advertise, the internet has undoubtedly allowed these companies to reach larger amounts of people than ever before. With increased advertisement obviously comes increased use.
This leads one to question, even though the internet has obviously allowed for new methods of increasing awareness of the negative externalities of cigarette use, has it actually promoted cigarette use as well?
I definitely agree with you in that the image of smoking has declined over the years. There used to be smoking ads and commercials that portrayed the user as cool, sexy, or popular. Nowadays it is more common to see an above the influence commercial presenting alarming statistics about the harms of cigaretts or the wrongdoings of the cigarette companies. Web 2.0 has made the people more aware of the harms of smoking, back in the day, the internet was not used as frequently, and for such purposes. People would not go on the internet to do learn about the harms of tobacco. However in our present day it would be commonplace for someone to go online and "google" the harms of smoking cigarettes. The internet provides a medium for people to share their personal experiences with cigarettes. Many have used the internet to share the negative effects of smoking tobacco as perhaps they got lung cancer from smoking cigarettes and don't want the same thing to happen to others. Or maybe it is someone sharing an anti-smoking blog post sharing their personal experience on how their family member or friend died from smoking cigarettes. I can definitely see why more people would discuss their feelings against cigarette smoking opposed to for it as that evokes the emotions of people more. However in making a connection with my own topic I would actually say that digital technology has worked to increase the amount of people smoking marijuana, which is interesting. As you mentioned, searching twitter for "cigarettes" would mainly yield results about people's feelings against cigarettes. If you searched twitter for "marijuana" I bet you would see very different results, the majority of which would be pro-marijuana, or for the legalization of marijuana. I believe that digital technology was a major factor in decreasing the popularity of cigarettes and increasing the popularity of marijuana.
ReplyDelete