How is the Internet changing us?

by Narkissos 20 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  nameless_one

  **pointless post removed, foolishness and flippancy blamed on sleep deprivation. apologies, carry on :-)**
• 

  jgnat

  I type faster reports.

  I think Time Magazine was absolutely right on the money when it declared that we-all were "person of the year" in 2006 by the democratizing power of the internet.

  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

  I fear:

  • We may lose the ability to express or read emotion through our faces. But perhaps www2 and YouTube will change that.
  • Interactions become artificial and manipulative, as children gain more experience interacting with computer-generated personalities than real ones.
  • Physically, I am frail from inactivity.
  • Descent to our baser natures because of the potential for instant stimulation (i.e. xxx).
  • Widening gap between networked and non-networked societies. Perhaps we should parachute in computers to the third-world countries. http://laptop.org/

  Some great hopes:

  • Broader democracies.
  • Targetted commercialism. I will only be discreetly solicited for things I really want. I will be asked what I want, and products will be designed for me (or my profile group).
  • Free creativity and a loosening of the copyright laws.
  • The world's borders dissolve. The world becomes smaller.

  contradictory and largely unverifiable "information"

  Perhaps "facts" will become a matter of majority opinion. That is google first hits will be believed by the majority. I hope for a backlash, a yearning for verifiable proof.

  What kind of (successful) ideas and people will this new context produce

  Computer information is transitory. The average web-page survives 44 days. Wikis are beautiful collaborative efforts but they also are in a constant state of change.

  Perhaps the future will be marked by constant changing ideologies.

  I suspect also that new beliefs will not require a leader. Wiki requires no codified index. The majority cares for it, and it continues to grow.

  Perhaps we will move from a codified belief structure to an organic one.

  P.S. jwfacts, I am impressed with your observations. I surely hope you are right about skepticism. I am sorely tried by my peers who quote internet legends as "fact".
• 

  llbh

  Perhaps the future will be marked by constant changing ideologies.

  This may be true but i believe basic idealogies change little, the means to achieve them does.If you go back to ancient Greece the cycle seems to repeat itself in varying forms..They had an absence of rulers, Anarchy, followed by Draco, crushing rulership folllowed by Solon and democracy. This is a little condensed and simplistic i know but is illustrative.

  Witness how Obama made millions from small donations via the interenet

  The internet is a liberating tool for the dissemination of ideas and information

  Its speed and immediacy is the thing which are the really important things along with its global reach

  Regards David
• 

  CyrusThePersian

  I think that one of the internet's biggest contributions is that certain people and organisations can no longer hide things from ordinary folks.

  Just like the printing press put Bibles and other books in the hands of farmers and shopkeepers, thus sparking both the Renaissance and the Reformation, the internet has put huge amounts of data at the disposal of anyone. Now it could be argued that libraries have always had lots of information, but the internet puts it all at your fingertips instantly!

  No longer can a company say that research shows that their product is better than Brand X because now people can get online and see the actual research findings or read message boards of actual users of the product.

  No longer can a religious organisation say,"We never said that Armageddon would happen in 1975 or that the end of the world would be within the generation that was alive in 1914." because with the internet, we can retrieve the information that shows that it isn't true.

  No longer will we hear some crazy story and wonder if it's true or not. We just access snopes.com or a similar website and do five minutes worth of research to establish the veracity of the story.

  In short, we have become a much better informed generation and, as a consequence, much harder to fool.

  CyrusThePersian
• 

  veradico

  http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org
• 

  WTWizard

  That is, until the government figures out how to get its foot in the Internet and restrict or ban it outright. Otherwise, they are going to lose a lot of power and the ability to sneak in stupid laws that serve no other purpose than to kill our freedom.

  Which would leave them wide open for the Washtowel Slaveholdery to take control of everything, and we all would head into the Second Dark Ages.
• 

  jgnat

  *sigh* the government is not evil, simply misguided. In democratic countries it is no better or no worse than the elecorate. Which does not speak very highly of us.
• 

  Narkissos

  Thank you all for your input.

  I feel it rather unlikely that the Internet will effectively promote any extant or future full-fledged ideology -- except perhaps some fuzzy virtual avatar of Habermas' communicative ethics, as a loose frame for the potentially infinite play of erratic and fragmentary tidbits of "ideas" which will never add up to a consistent system.

  And I agree that jwfacts' point is very enlightening: Internet religion, just as Internet philosophy or politics, is bound to have a similar structure (or lack thereof) as Internet sex. Satisfaction being mainly obtained in a "virtual," non-committed and unconsequential way, only optionally and exceptionally carried into the "real". Which may well be the best, or perhaps the only viable "economy" for a X-billion human population when you come to think of it.

  One possible side effect is the shift from a tragic view of existence to a more playful one, which might alleviate anxiety but would also affect "democracy" -- "voting" being but a "click" or a "move" among many in the game.

  All of this imo is neither "good" nor "bad," it's just happening and to a large extent suits us (as the product of the thinking and politics of the past few decades) perfectly. How long it will remain satisfactory to the next generations who have grown in the Internet sphere is another matter. A desire for reality, and rage against the virtual machine are not to rule out.

  Comments still welcome!
• 

  blondie

  I can remember my hours at the library doing research without a computer, all on paper and some on microfilm. Now I can access things on the computer from home. I order books, CDs, DVDs online from the library to be dropped off at my neighborhood library. I investigate my medications and illnesses online and communicate with my doctor and view my lab tests all online. I can tap into music online without the need of purchasing the CD, and I can burn it on a CD if I want it for my library. I can communicate online with people all over the world (although I still use snail mail). I can watch my tv shows that I miss live or if my dvd screws up the recording. I can read the news from numerous papers and magazines, all on line. I order things from Penneys and Amazon online rather than making a phone call or doing it on paper.

  My life has changed and is still changing.

  Blondie
• 

  jgnat

  One possible side effect is the shift from a tragic view of existence to a more playful one, which might alleviate anxiety but would also affect "democracy" -- "voting" being but a "click" or a "move" among many in the game.

  Now, this is an interesting thought. I am beginning to hire a great number of the "Generation Y", and they do relate to authority very differently than my generation. They expect to start out as peers, and to be listened to.