What do you see as the result of the internet and it's power to connect people to ideas?

[Moonbeam]

A raging topic of the day is foreign interference in our elections based on divisive internet postings by all manner of folk with an agenda. Propaganda has never been easier to spread. People are being stimulated like never before with rage against all manner of 'others'. Where do you see this as going. Will we break up into helpless warring groups helpless against organized authoritarian enemies or will we become psychologically impervious to all such manipulation with time. Is this a virus destined to destroy us or one against which we will develop real immunity?

 

[feralkid]

Mostly I see its power to show incorrect usage of the apostrophe.

 

[Paladin3]

The Internet gives everyone a voice, even if it is often just shouting in the wind. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be very good consumers of information and many of us seem incapable of even basic levels of critical thinking. And the Internet is a very useful tool for those with the urge to believe for which they will sell their souls to wallow in the thrill of being a rebel.

 

[Greenman]

Social media is crowd mentality from the comfort of your living room. The only saving grace is that it's for the most part impotent.

 

[cytg111]

It was a great idea to begin with until someone figured out to mass farm our private data for flipping democracies and personal capitalistic gain. Convince us to whore out our privacy to be part of the digital online herd mentality.

 

[JSt0rm]

The internet was a bad idea.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

The internet was a bad idea.

The internet was a great idea, allowing people to use it anonymously was a bad idea.

 

[sandorski]

To this point it certainly has had mixed results. The novelty of it and the anonymous nature of it has certainly caused much social disruption. That said, if you go back even within your own experience, I think you will see a maturation occurring. In time things will settle down and social mores will be established, then the Internet will just be one aspect of our day to day existence.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

To this point it certainly has had mixed results. The novelty of it and the anonymous nature of it has certainly caused much social disruption. That said, if you go back even within your own experience, I think you will see a maturation occurring. In time things will settle down and social mores will be established, then the Internet will just be one aspect of our day to day existence.

I think you're wrong. There is no common ground on the internet. An internet culture will eventually emerge but, it will resemble nothing we currently understand. I have little hope that reason or politeness will have any place in that culture.

 

[sandorski]

I think you're wrong. There is no common ground on the internet. An internet culture will eventually emerge but, it will resemble nothing we currently understand. I have little hope that reason or politeness will have any place in that culture.

Yore rong!!!!!!!

 

[UglyCasanova]

The internet was a great idea, allowing people to use it anonymously was a bad idea.

I disagree, anonymity is one of the great things about it. I think more than anything else social media and twitters short length are the cancers. Twitter has shrunk our attention spans and Facebook's "likes" is a drug.

 

[Jhhnn]

I don't know what to think sometimes, Moonbeam. It's like conservatives are walking around with their amygdalas hanging out & right wing propagandists are giving us that "she shouldn't have dressed so provocatively" routine.

 

[Greenman]

I think you're wrong. There is no common ground on the internet. An internet culture will eventually emerge but, it will resemble nothing we currently understand. I have little hope that reason or politeness will have any place in that culture.

This is the way I see it. The net would be a far better place if everything we wrote had our name and picture attached.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

The internet is a really incredible thing, and is the largest democratization of information since the printing press made the written word widely available.

It is a truly incredible trove of information, entertainment, community, and exchange of ideas and thought.

I feel that people are putting the cart in front of the horse on this one. People are, and have always been scared, confused, lost, and easily herded. The internet didn't change or invent that, it's just that the pulling of the strings was also decentralized and democratized.

We're right at the start of this roller coaster and the ride's only going to get more interesting from here.

 

[woolfe9998]

I recall reading a study a long time ago, back in the 80's, which said that people tend to believe whatever they read. Well now they tend to believe whatever dipshit living in his mom's basement writes.

The internet is responsible for the widespread dissemination of misinformation and bad ideas. A trove of information is only a good thing for people who have the critical thinking skills to separate the digital wheat from the digital chaff. Most people do not. So far the internet is a net negative for humanity. Ironically, it may prove to be the demise of democracy.

 

[Steeplerot]

Massive amounts of confirmation bias and dunning Kruger effect gone mad, along with convenient ways to wall yourself into echo chambers filled with pure propaganda with almost zero real life social stigmas of being edgy. As Magnus stated, anonymity is the biggest problem. (although I feel really uncomfortable about how much is out there about people already)

 

[dank69]

Used to be a time when you had to travel to Tijuana to see a donkey show. Now we can watch them anytime from the comfort of our own personal dungeon. I think we'll be all right.

 

[interchange]

It's a vehicle with tremendous potential. Unfortunately, it overwhelms the nature of humanity. When human systems try to integrate difference faster then their capacity to tolerate doing so, they go into survival mode. That entails harsh subdivision, in which case the internet can be a huge reinforcer of perceived divisions in order to protect against the threat of being overtaken by integration of difference. That is not necessarily bad. When subgroups have gone fully into survival mode without any permeability to outside ideas, securing the borders as a collective is what makes the danger of integrating difference less. What happens then is subgroups start to recognize and integrate differences of individuals within their own subgroup. That allows them to start recognizing commonalities among those differences in the opposing subgroup and open up their boundaries to integrating differences. Then a new phase of attempting integration occurs.

The internet? Well, it just seems to accelerate everything. It's not bad to have a stronger driving force to group dynamics, but if the restraining forces to increased complexity are greater than the driving forces, we will over time continue to move in the direction of harsher subdivisions.

 

[dainthomas]

Crackpot conspiracy theories used to largely spread through people subscribing to newsletters in the back of gun magazines and the like, which really limited the audience.

I don't think the human mind is capable of effectively filtering the amount of information it's exposed to on a daily basis. Which really gives the garbage an opportunity to spread.

 

[pmv]

The internet is fine, it's humans that are the problem.

Maybe it's just a continuation of the problem with mass media in general - we never evolved to be able to cope with so much social contact with such a large number of people (with radically-different contexts and histories). We spent most of our time in small groups of hunter-gatherers, or living in small settled communities, did we not?

I think I read somewhere (and maybe this is one of those dodgy 'factoids') that the human brain grew in size mainly to provide the intellectual firepower needed to cope with social interaction. I think technology means we are going to need considerably bigger brains.