In this week's edition of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell argues that modern social activism has been fundamentally changed by social networking services like Twitter and Facebook. Instead of making high-risk commitments like protesting, he says, we are now simply joining groups or following pages. Thus, he concludes our modern society is incapable of making the big stands needed to cause big social change or revolutions. Those days are long gone.

And perhaps they are. Revolutions that radically change the social landscape won't happen the same way they always have, but social change will come nonetheless. New media like Twitter, Facebook and texting, microblogging if you will, has fundamentally changed the way we communicate and organize. Now, instead of structured organizations, we have networks of people with common goals and interests.

People can now constantly share ideas and opinions while accessing the latest news moments after it happens. We can form groups and find meeting places within seconds. I can contact my representative in Congress via the Internet and express my concern over any issue I want. This is how social change will happen in the modern age — not by charismatic leaders organizing events one at a time, but by individuals coordinating their efforts on a massive scale. These aren't revolutions, they're microrevolutions.

People have no need to march on Washington if they have the ability to constantly make social change via the Internet. The gay rights movement won't culminate with one speech, but with many little conversations over Facebook. The glass ceiling of gender inequality won't be shattered; it will be chipped away piece by piece for years to come.

In my opinion, this kind of social change is far superior to what happened in the past. Instead of waiting for Superman to come and save us, we have become Superpeople empowered by our new social media.

Furthermore, Gladwell seriously underestimates the effect social media will have on the big revolutions when they do happen. He points to the negligible influence of Twitter and new social media in protests in Iran and Moldova, which had been termed "Twitter Revolutions." Sure, these instances were overblown in the national media, because the media has a tendency to do that. They did, however, bring the attention of the world and its governments to the plight of faraway people.

Just as television brought home the tragedy of the Vietnam War, new social media brings home the tragedies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the everyday battles for survival of so many more.

For example, look to the recent earthquake in Haiti. Though it doesn't represent much social change, it tells of the power of new social media to organize people to help one another. In an article on Jan. 14, guardian.co.uk reported that social media "partly made up for the lack of information from the affected area on what had happened and what was most needed." Tweets coming out of the rubble in Port-au-Prince were often more valuable than official news reports. Volunteers from across the globe organized instantly over the Internet to extend a helping hand to the people affected by the natural disaster. People could even donate money through text messages.

Now imagine if America faced a social challenge on a grand scale. That same organizing technique that helped Haiti would no doubt be used to organize protests and organizations to mount a truly effective campaign.

The days of big revolutions are long gone, replaced by the constant force of the many microrevolutions. Our generation won't change the world with manifestos and million-man marches. Instead, we'll be busy changing the world little by little, 140 characters at a time.