The most precious of human intellectual activity, in my opinion, is innovation. Innovative ideas are hard to come by. The Internet has been widely touted as one of the most influential inventions in the history of mankind. It is hard to disagree with this assertion. However, I cannot help but wonder whether the Internet revolution will have a positive or negative impact over human innovation.
The world was made up of thousands of local communities with different conditions, traditions and ways of living. The variances among the communities were a sure source of a welcomed inconsistency in human thoughts, emotions and ideas. An inconsistency that added color to the intellectual products of human intelligence. Over the years the boundaries among these communities kept falling, but never like today. The Internet has destroyed the protective boundaries around societies in a way that has never been experienced before.
Does the inter-sharing of ideas from all over the globe help us create new ones, or does it just dilute our uniqueness as humans such that we cannot identify or differentiate, any more, our ideas from those of others?
The Internet is a great forum for exchanging ideas, but could there be too much exchange of ideas? With the world becoming a small village, do we run the risk of creating a uniform intellectual environment that could hamper our ability to continue our vibrant intellectual innovation that has relied for so long on our differences as much as our intelligence? Is the Internet driving us towards becoming a blend of humarnets who can finish each other's sentences?
The Internet has made it possible for many to voice their ideas and to interconnect with other humarnets. Is this interconnectivity creating too much chatter that is burying innovative ideas in a flood of worthless and repetitive ones? Is the chatter making it hard to hear even our own voices?
These are questions worth asking even though I am not sure what to do even if the answer is affirmative for I am as addicted and connected to this MATRIX as any of you reading this Blog!
4 comments:
In the world of innovation and the arts, this is THE question to ask. It is somewhat discouraging to an artist when they look at the wide range of advanced works that exist on the internet.
As for your humarnets, this idea has been thrown around in science fiction for years and is now being critically looked at as a logical conclusion to the exponential growth of technology.
You can get a general summary of it here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Humarnet are not intended here to be intelligent machines, but rather humans who are interconnected through the internet. To state the question again in a different way: Does the heavy interconnection of humans through the internet blur our differences and makes us so much of the same?
Just some thoughts:
This subject came up in a different from in one of Dr.McQuail's classes. In relation to art and literature, it seems that the wide expanse of the internet has given a complete freedom of personal publication (i.e. blogs and so on). The problem really shows up when individuals search for new interests. Material is so randomized, as you say, that the quest is far too arduous for the leisurely explorer. This problem could be addressed by the creation of filters (or advanced search engines, though this looks less likely everyday). Some sites have always been around in the vein in which I speak (Boingboing.net is one of my favorites). The real problem is trust. The user must trust these filters to supply the very best material the internet has to offer. Do I want to put my international exposure to internet materials in the hands of a stranger or do I want to spend the large amount of time out of my day to sift through it myself?
Of course, once again, I'm dancing around your main point. Which I must respond to in the affirmative. In the same vein, we are expected now to operate on a level relative to the average of the world, rather than our local surroundings. This could effectively place culture in a state of shock, being restricted within so many limits, trying to avoid stepping on the toes of those they will never meet.
I believe the answer is yes, we will blur and we will have fewer differences, fewer languages, fewer religions, we will eventually look similar to each other. Evolution made it possible to be vastly different though we came from the same cell, human are speeding up evolution and directing it toward certain direction. If human are not careful, they will destroy everything, including themselves. It is a fact that, 50 years without animals and plants, the world will not survive, but 50 years without humans, life will flourish. Will human realize that soon, that is what worries me.
It is not only internet that will make us one, it is the speed of transportation that is already taking place since the 1900. Now I can go any part of the planet within max of one day, that has a huge effect on changing cultures.
So, internet, transportation, are big factors for reducing the natural-selection, it is now the human-selection era.
However, no one can underestimate the power of natural selection, mother nature might fed up from all of us, and decide it is time for a change.
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