THE pastor was preaching during the Sunday service. Then he announced gaily to the congregation, "please google the world 'Tehilah' on your blackberries and Android devices while I read today's message from my iPad. For church members who were not at Thursday's service, kindly watch it on YouTube or tubidy or download the mp3 version of my sermon on 4shared.com.
"Also, our home cell groups would be conducted on our Facebook group page while my meeting with youths would be held via Skype on Tuesday. Please tune in. Moving on, he said, "members who want counselling can follow any of our pastors on Twitter while members who want to have private conversations with me can see me after the service and take my Blackberry pin. Interested members should, please, register early online for this year's pilgrimage.”
When it was time for offering, the pastor said, “Let us move towards the ATMs and tellers with laptops to give our offerings with ATM card and Master cards.”
Welcome to the 21st century, this analogy seems to say. This pastor's announcement, perhaps, captures the way technology and, especially social networking, has changed the lives of people all around the world.
It is evident everywhere. In Nigeria, with the advent of mobile telephones and easy access to the internet, the world has become a global village indeed.
According to a research by an online organisation, internetworldstats.com, more than one billion users log on to the internet daily for various reasons.
During the last 10 years, social networks have evolved from simple communication hubs to veritable agents of change; galvanising thousands of people over political discourse, creating and changing industries, and all in all, transforming people's lives.
Just a couple of years back, many people dismissed Facebook as a place for kids to share their rants and pictures. Today, more than 600 million users worldwide are active on this website. Approximately 200 million people are active on twitter, another 100 million use LinkedIn.
None of these social networks even excited at the beginning of the decade. While these figures may be mere numbers for many people, the impact of social network goes far and deep. Here are a few areas in which social networks have had lasting and arguably permanent effects.
Ademola Ashaye, an IT expert, said that the future of technology had yet to be born. "Even as sophisticated as we think the gadgets we use are, there are infinite ways in which it could be done better.
We have only explored the tip of the technological iceberg", he said.
Technology, especially, social networking, has indeed, changed the way we live and touched every sphere of human endeavour.
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