Similar to the effect that the printing press had on the world.
I don’t normally pay attention to stuff like that, so … most movies I’ve seen? The worst source of leaked footage, spoilers, etc. IME is the trailers they play in the movie theater.
Similar to the effect that the printing press had on the world.
I don’t normally pay attention to stuff like that, so … most movies I’ve seen? The worst source of leaked footage, spoilers, etc. IME is the trailers they play in the movie theater.
People who say the Internet is not an essential service have never tried living without it. But it isn’t an absolute necessity to use online forms or convenient apps and sites. It has done much good, and substantial harm, and we don’t know enough about this to fully quantify it. But those of us who predate the Internet remember older technology. Telegraphs, phones, IRC (now essentially Slack), bat signals, reading, actually talking to people who look you in the eye instead of staring at a rectangle.
Not even close. It might be similar if just about every person on earth was given a printing press, free maintenance, free paper and free worldwide distribution.
One of the first things printed by Gutenberg was a book that has perhaps inspired more civil division than anything else in History. Certainly more than Twitter or Facebook.
Yes, there are problems elsewhere.
You know that IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, right?
The internet and the printing press both made it a lot easier to share information and ideas than it was before. I don’t think you can make it easy to spread information and ideas without making it easier to spread false information and bad ideas.
/yes. But the parameters of the question are unclear. If one technology doesn’t qualify another does. (Wafts smoke signal.)
I will admit that the thought has crossed my mind that the Internet enabled the stupids. But hearing someone else say it… there have been plenty of stupid or worse things like the Nazis and the KKK that did just fine without the Internet. So destroying the Internet isn’t going to keep you safe.
Feels that way. Heck, I’d almost just say ban social media apps since this all felt like less of a problem when you had to sit at a desk in order to absorb the stupid. Now the stupid rides along in your pocket 24/7.
(I suppose you’d have to somehow eliminate their mobile websites as well but you know what I mean)
There is the perfect being the enemy of the good again. The goal isn’t to be safe-The goal is to be safer.
I’m not 100% fond of the specific forms our linked-up communication has taken at this particular point, but us getting wired up for effortless communication is a major evolutionary-level development and is critical for our ongoing development as a species.
It makes widespread individual participation in collective decision-making processes possible in a way it wasn’t before.
I disagree that what you want is safer. It was still a risk, just like it was with older technology.
How is it in any way the perfect getting in the way of the good, or making us safer? As @Jay_Z said, the Nazis and the KKK did just fine without the internet. For some more examples that long predate the internet, there’s the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in 1903 which didn’t need computers to widely spread, and inside America there’s lets see, off the top of my head the German American Bund, The Silver Legion of America, The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, The Order which got its name from the 1978 book The Turner Diaries, the National Alliance, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and numerous other organizations dedicated to fighting the ’ Zionist Occupation Government’ that didn’t need the internet to spread or make us as a society not safe or not safer.
I rather disagree with that. When I was in my 20s, the average person would go from point A to point B and be totally disconnected from the people at both points (save for a stop at a payphone) and mostly not connected with the people seen in passing, save for a chance encounter. This alone time was probably valuable for maintaining the stability of the psyche. It allowed us to center ourselves, free of distraction or even the threat of distraction.
Wikipedia means I can look just about anything up and instantly learn stuff, but having it there means I do not need to remember it because I can look it up again next time. GPS (which I eschew) means not having to develop the ability to understand the layout of an area or where stuff is, just let the thingy be your guide. Radio means you never get have to suffer in silence. Cars, well, I will not go off on that.
Technology is teaching us that we do not need to do certain things anymore. And so the skills atrophy and we become less capable. That is not advancement, cool as the shiny toys may be. When our global ecosystem collapses in a few years, we will not be prepared to deal with it because the next iPhone model is beckoning.
The same is true of any technology. Writing killed the ability of people to memorize long stories and histories. Somehow we managed to put the spare brainpower to better use and outsource the memorization to books.
Yes, there are some downsides, but mostly technology has acted as a brain enhancement device, allowing us to do things we could not before.
I agree. Kids these days don’t know how to plough their fields, grow their own wheat, separate wheat and chaff, grind wheat into flour, make flour into dough, or bake dough into bread. Nor do they know how to slaughter and butcher a cow, or milk one and churn the dairy into cheese. They can’t forge their own tools, nor mine ore, purify it, and smelt it.
Why, I bet you don’t even know how to bang two rocks together to make a simple Oldowan tools!
I’d suggest that members of generations that have forgotten how to make stones into tools shouldn’t throw them either.
And Acheulean tool making techniques killed our ability to make Oldowan tools. Truly, a great loss to our culture. MAOA! (Make America Oldowan Again).
It’s an interesting hypothesis. But the real problems seem to have cropped up around 2015*, even though the internet has been easily available for ordinary people since around 1995, social media since around 2005, and smartphones since 2007. Why no major problems for the first 20 years or so of the internet, the first 10 years of social media, the first 8 years of smartphones, and then all of a sudden there are problems?
*. I’m not claiming there weren’t people posting crazy and dangerous stuff on the internet prior to 2015, but rather that that was when it started to become a problem that’s threatening our civilization.
To answer the OP, I think we would lose a lot more than we would gain by getting rid of the internet. I don’t think it’s the source of our problems. It’s merely a tool that’s being used by the people who are causing the problems.
I’m thinking that if/when Twitter goes down permanently, it will be a net gain for society.