How does the intenet change how I think?
I have always been influenced by the idea of a computer as an augmentation of mind. So there has always been a body of knowldege and expertise which I have considered to be 'computer work', which is, in effect not to be considered worthy of my time. So while I have always had enormous curiosity, there is a point at which I stop and say - ah, this is something for a computer. But I've also recognized how a well-designed system can walk you through the knowledge of another person and give a sort of experiential learning that is different from reading a book or watching a video recording.
So no the whole, computing is not a necessarily inferior way of gaining knowledge. It has strengths and weaknesses that can be analyzed. It uses different methods to accomplish the imparting of knowlege, of alerting one to changing situations, of expressing beauty and of recording experience. It requires a new kind of literacy.
The Internet is, in many ways, still very primative to my sensibilities. There are a great number of processes that still have not been optimized or augmented by computing networks. It's still very easy to imagine beyond the current capacities of the networks. So I have two quick concepts that I have evolved that I'd like to share that are aspects of the quality of computer mediated communication that help me think.
The Forbin Error
One thing which is clearly in evidence that we didn't know about massive computing 30 years ago is the extent to which it is part of human agency. I'm still not sure we understand all of the implications of this evolving way of looking at mass computing. Clearly in the old days, Colossus was the nightmare scenario. We believed that computers would begin thinking and that all of the kind of thinking we do would be replicated and automated and so that computers would assert their will and implement computer agency which conflicted with human agency. So the scary idea would be that computers would connect of their own volition and begin sharing strategies to control the other machines in our lives. But we now know that computers, in every respect, are agents of human desire because they are built and fabricated by humans. We make them 'want'. So we now know that WOPR or the MCP from Tron are not real possibilities. What we didn't expect is that criminal organizations would have access to botnets which might eventually do the same evil things we expected from the ghost in the machine.
The Aesthetic of Wisdom
I have been online reading websites since the days before search engines and cgi-bin. So I am very much aware of the evolution of design and content by all sorts of communicators. I have developed a sense of where I'm going to find things which goes beyond that which a search engine can provide. It's like being able to read the architecture of a neighborhood or city. You can tell sophistication from pretense, you can tell good design from ornament, you can make judgments about traffic patterns. You can tell business from blight. So there is a new skill of discrimination that I have learned which is not necessarily directed at the content itself. The presentation of material is a meta-framework giving me an indication of what quality of content I can expect, and that is an important sort of judgment to have. I know this when I compare my sense of it to the older generation, who are not stupid, but don't pick up the clues that will tell them if a site is a parked domain, or a low quality adsite, or a possible warren of viruses.
Next, The New First Person
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