Does the tool need to be tangible?

In the articles for this week, one of the common threads throughout were the use of different products, or tools by which people were able to create incredible social change and significantly better the lives of many in the world. There were stories about OLPC, the exponential growth of cell phone use, self-adjusting eye glasses, and solar cells. And all of these things are tangible, touchable, and require materials that cost money to create.

But what about the tools that are causing social innovation that are not tangible, that do not require daunting logistic hurdles to their implementation? That can create widespread social change, transform lives, and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people? As simple (or as silly) as it might seem, what about Twitter?

The social network that allows for just a sliver of a sentence to be shared has been causing some big waves lately as an agent for social change. Twitter is free, and with the fast-growing number of people who have carry cell phones now, it is more accessible than ever.

It is a prime tool for something as serious as revolutions, and as commercial as product launches. Twitter has become a major player in the social sphere, and one that cannot be ignored. It has rallied the masses into action during natural disasters, and seriously peaked the interest of multiple governments who took a hard look at its influence during the Iran protests. Whether it is used for play, for politics, for philanthropy, or more, the fact remains that it has revolutionized the way the world communicates in real-time and that is powerful.

Everyone might not have it, or use it now, but all change takes time. As stated in the ‘Power to the People’ article, cell phones took off in about 13 years. Twitter is only 5 years old, and still a relative newbie to many. Could it eventually die off? Maybe. Is it just a fad? Perhaps… or perhaps not. Its use in elections is proof that at the least, it will have a place in history. It is a simple, free tool that has been proven astonishingly capable of creating social action. Whatever might be its fate, one thing is clear. It fundamentally changed the way people in the world are able to talk to one another.