It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.
It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.
Speaking of utopias, have you heard that the internet was supposed to bring people together and ends pointless debates?
The idea was that people would be exposed to opposing viewpoints since everyone could communicate effortlessly with everyone. Information would also be easily available to everyone, which would make it clear who is right and who is wrong.
Yeah, that worked out perfectly…
I mean, It has partially worked, information is more accessible than it would be if you had to go find a library and search through a ton of book that may or may not even have what youre looking for, or had to try to find someone who knew something or had some skill that you wanted to learn. And it has brought together people across distance, consider the number of online communities and subcultures whos members live in far-removed places, some of whom might be in fairly small towns or rural areas that just wouldnt have enough people of a particular interest to even have a branch of that community there. And it does also reduce the monopoly on dissemination of news and information that traditional media outlets and governments used to share. Its just, the predictions didnt also take into account that it would increase the ease of spreading false information either, or that not all debates have an answer that is obvious to everyone if only they are presented certain info, or that people wont want to talk to everyone and will instead choose to talk to those they find commonality with even given the means to talk to people they dont.
Turns out, having the facts is only a partial solution. If people don’t want to take them as facts, you’re still going to have stupid debates about anything and everything all of the time.
We’ve fixed the information availability problem, but human psychology hasn’t changed one bit.
If everybody was fully exposed to the internet, a general consensus view on a topic would be eventually settled. The problem is that a lot of us live in walled gardens and the networks that be work to keep us in them
Turns out it wasn’t a lack of information accessibility keeping people stupid.
The internet has proven that the majority of the population doesn’t want to think for themselves. That part of the population wants to be told what to think so they can fit into a group and feel better than some other group because we are social animals and that tended to work out for the vast majority of humanity’s existence.
This includes people who do positive things to fit in too, and I don’t think free thinkers are special, they are just not in the majority.
That’s basically how innate tribalism manifests in a modern society. That used to be a killer feature to have in a human brain when you’re mostly surrounded by predators and wilderness. Being part of your local in-group was a matter of life and death, so tribalism wasn’t really optional.
Who ever said this about the internet?
On the alt.* newsgroups, long before the average non-techie started having “internet” access through prodigy or aol or genie or whatever, it was plain to see this would be nothing but arguments between strangers.
I think that was in documentary about Darpa net and how it evolved into the early internet. It contained interviews of some of the early pioneers and they had interesting stories to tell about what the atmosphere was at the time. So, that was around the time when they were still developing the communication protocols and hardware needed for running a large network. What we think of as the web, didn’t even exist back then.
I don’t know why anyone would ever think that.
People are always going to have differing opinions.
I was one of those people. I still maintain hope, but the fear of what the algorithms will do outweighs that hope some days.
The thinking was that people’s core opinions are formed while they are young. They are mostly inherited from your family and society around you, so that information bubbles are formed early that are hard to break out of.
I thought that if people were exposed to multiple cultures and ideas from a young age through the Internet, they would understand them better – not just as foreign concepts told to them through a thick lens of bias from their parents and teachers.
However, I failed to predict the opposite powers. First were the echo chambers that formed, strengthening the deepest dark sides of humanity that, before, were kept locked away in basements lacking anyone with whom to discuss and provide validity. Then the corpos and MBAs figured out they could psychology game us all with algorithms. They didn’t necessarily know at first that the negative content would be the best for driving engagement; but they didn’t care either.
So right now I think the bad is outweighing the good. But I don’t think it has to stay this way forever.
I disagree!
Someday soon I’m sure we’ll get that paperless office.
This one I’ve seen pretty darn realized. My last “in office” job was more than 5 years ago, but while there were printers available they were not used often. Nobody would hand you a piece of paper with any exception you’d have to keep it safe or for any period of time, and even then you’d also have a digital copy sent to you. Then and now, I still keep an notepad, but its only for things I need to remember for less than 24 hours or that get entered electronically very shortly after.
This was a fortune 100 company too, not some Mom-and-pop office.
My office is paperless, but we’re a tech startup.
My office is paperless and we’re a staid finance company.
I can’t remember when I’ve last needed paper in an office setting. I doubt I have a printer set up on my work computers. Don’t even need to sign anything or pass contracts or doctor’s notes around.
Notebooks or hand drawn diagrams and things exist if you want them, of course.
YMMV.
I still have some papers around, but I don’t really need any and of them. If they all burned tomorrow, my work wouldn’t be affected in any way.
As you might remember, it used to be called “information superhighway.” As it turns out, not only does it make information flow faster from A to B, it also divides people that lie to either side of the road, in a metaphorical sense.
Required reading See especially figure 3b. TLDR: Increased information access and increased connections lead to more echo chambers.
It is also a bullshit highway, and bullshit can travel faster since it isn’t held back by understanding, logic, or even thought.
Hmm… That’s an interesting result. Makes sense too. When more and more people have access to the internet, they can form more and more specialized niche groups with each other. Just in Reddit alone, there’s already a sub for anything you can think of and also many things you would never think of in a million years.
Yes. Sounding. 😬
There are lots of places like that. So many, that the number of people randomly visiting them and coming back feeling unwell was not insignificant. That’s why r/eyeBleach was invented. If you need a place like this, it really tells you something about the kinds of subs people never thought would exist.