James Giago Davies: Lakota culture reshaped by social networking


James Giago Davies. Photo from Native Sun News

It’s time to start social networking
Lakota country will soon be reshaped by the internet
By James Giago Davies
www.nsweekly.com

I don’t like Donald Trump much, certainly would never vote for him, but I have looked at his hands, compared them to the hand size of other people standing close beside him, and he doesn’t have small hands.

But people think he does. Saw it on TV or the internet, must be true. In this day and age everything gets recorded on the internet, and then makes it onto the TV. You have to be careful what you assert, or question. Like when Hillary Clinton accusatorily questions where Bernie Sanders was when she was fighting for health care reform over twenty years ago?...a video crops up of Bernie standing right on the stage with her, back in the day, and she is thanking him for all his help and support.

The internet seldom forgets.

Print media is dying. I work for print media, so this is not something I am in a hurry to see happen. In a decade there will be no print copy of any newspaper available. You will find it online, or you won’t find it anywhere.

Because there won’t be TV like there is now. Networks will be application based, cable systems a thing of the past, like the VCR. That DVD library you have been building, even the Blue-Ray, will pretty much gather dust. You’ll have your own private app, with all the stuff you care about, an app you will access at your leisure.

Until six months ago I didn’t have a cell phone. Stubbornly refused to give in, preferred a landline or email. Now, I really can’t do my job effectively unless I have a cell phone. I gave up the landline entirely some months back, just a wasted expense.

It is hard to believe such a reality could ever come to Lakota country. Nothing much appears to have changed. I drive hundreds of miles across isolated blacktop just to get to remote arenas to watch two tiny schools ball up, and the bleachers are full of people sitting with cell phones glued to the sides of their heads.


Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: It’s time to start social networking

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

Copyright permission Native Sun News

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