Much of what happens over the networks is a metaphor - we chat without speaking, smile without grinning, and hug without touching. How sad to dwell in a metaphor without living the experience.
And where does a newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite. -
Movie: Ghost in the Shell
[about the information on the web]”The pace, the vast wealth of information coming from all directions — how the heck can you keep up when it comes at you like this? Yes, it seems too much to assimilate,”
“Watch a child play a computer game or surf the Internet — truly child’s play. How parochial of us to assume that just because our imprinted minds can’t keep up, that fresh new minds won’t be able to either. We are amazingly adaptable, which is why we survived — our progeny will not only adapt, they will excel.
“However, we need to give them the right tools. We need to teach them to think critically and objectively — teach them to grasp scientific methodology and embrace technological literacy.
“Unfortunately our society does a very poor job of this. The future of the human race is too important to leave to politicians and corporations. A scientifically educated global population will help us focus on the truly important problems, such as energy — arguably the most important crisis we as a species will face — instead of wasting efforts on petty squabbles for short term economic and political gain.”
“Watch a child play a computer game or surf the Internet — truly child’s play. How parochial of us to assume that just because our imprinted minds can’t keep up, that fresh new minds won’t be able to either. We are amazingly adaptable, which is why we survived — our progeny will not only adapt, they will excel.
“However, we need to give them the right tools. We need to teach them to think critically and objectively — teach them to grasp scientific methodology and embrace technological literacy.
“Unfortunately our society does a very poor job of this. The future of the human race is too important to leave to politicians and corporations. A scientifically educated global population will help us focus on the truly important problems, such as energy — arguably the most important crisis we as a species will face — instead of wasting efforts on petty squabbles for short term economic and political gain.”
“The Internet has had an enormous effect on my work and on my life. I am able to communicate nearly instantly with people all over the world and the access to information [it provides] enables me to find out what I need to know much more rapidly and efficiently than I ever could by going to a library.”
[The Internet] It’s multiplied my productivity by a factor of about five…
Science will create new levels of meaning. The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory. It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not. It is all becoming effectively one machine. And we are the machine.
Did the Bells create the Internet? Did the cable companies create the Internet? The answer is no. The Internet was built on a different model, a public interest model, funded by American taxpayers.
There’s an easy way to describe today’s online culture of participation without invoking Web 2.0 at all. Just call it the Internet. That way, everyone will know what you mean.
I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end.
We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.
In 1991 I published a book called Mirror Worlds; in a way, it was a celebration of computing technology (although it was ambivalent about computers in the end). It predicted the emergence of software versions of real-world institutions that you would “tune in” by means of a global network. It claimed that this would be a good development: you would be able to tour the world “without changing out of your pajamas.” These mirror worlds would be “the new public square,” would “monopolize the energy and attention of thousands…, broadcast an aesthetic and a world-view to millions, mold behavior and epitomize the age.”
Essay: “Computers and the Pursuit of Happiness”, Commentary, January 2001
The Web is an improvement much like plumbing, without the health benefits.
Essay: “Computers and the Pursuit of Happiness”, Commentary, January 2001
The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.
The natural means of interaction and of sharing information is, of course, conversation, through the ability to ask and answer questions, to impart and collect knowledge. I’m not one to make allusions to primitive life as if that describes the natural state of man, but I will in this case: When you listened to the tribe storyteller, you could remix before passing on; when you heard from the town crier, you could stick your head out the window and ask for details; when you set the price of a good or service, you got to haggle with the seller. This is why Socrates said that education is a conversation, and why Luther said that prayer is a conversation, and why Cluetrain says that markets are conversations, and why I say that news is a conversation. That is the natural order of things.
In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world’s population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone’s 10-year plan.
The Internet views censorship as a network failure, and routes around it.
On the Internet, there is no ‘they’. There’s only a very, very large ‘us’.
We’re using technology to extend the human nervous system. The Internet is a kind of global prosthetic extension of human consciousness. It wasn’t consciously intended as one but it amounts to one.
Movie: “No Maps For These Territories” a Documentary