The Internet
Internet gives us many things - entertainment, knowledge and even social relationships. Very nice.
But why are the new top people of the western world things like Elon Musk and Donald Trump? WTF? Whatever ones political leanings are in the world that shouldn't seem right.
We have easier access to more and higher quality information than ever. But our great leaders emphasize more and more primitive techniques: "I Strong - I Win!" "I Smart - I Technology Better!". Does anyone actually use the internet beyond the clickbait?
Musk has said that all his dozens of projects have been cheaper ways to do more. Only the Tesla model 3 seems to be so. Most others have been demonstrable failures or more expensive or have never even progressed to be anything demonstrable. But he will get inevitably to Mars since he gets pretty much all the funding he needs for whatever project he comes up with. Not because of scientific proofs and demonstrations but because he has charisma and the means to market himself for his audience.
For Trump... pretty much the same story. A man who understands the internet and has the charisma and the means to market himself for his audience. Unintuitive and unemotional things like science are less and less relevant.
And all this is a side quirk of the internet. Yesterday we relied on large and probably somewhat corrupt sources like the news. But at least those sources could be criticized. The scientific community could be loudly hard on a specific source. Other competing sources could be hard on other sources.
But how can the scientific community be hard on a tweet? On a youtube video? Or on almost anything else relevant on the modern internet? Anyone can claim anything to be science and almost no one checks the sources and on controversial issues there are always too many corrupt sources for basic checking to even matter.
I like the internet - it gives me many things I love. I hate what it does to mankind. Fuck you, mankind!
But why are the new top people of the western world things like Elon Musk and Donald Trump? WTF? Whatever ones political leanings are in the world that shouldn't seem right.
We have easier access to more and higher quality information than ever. But our great leaders emphasize more and more primitive techniques: "I Strong - I Win!" "I Smart - I Technology Better!". Does anyone actually use the internet beyond the clickbait?
Musk has said that all his dozens of projects have been cheaper ways to do more. Only the Tesla model 3 seems to be so. Most others have been demonstrable failures or more expensive or have never even progressed to be anything demonstrable. But he will get inevitably to Mars since he gets pretty much all the funding he needs for whatever project he comes up with. Not because of scientific proofs and demonstrations but because he has charisma and the means to market himself for his audience.
For Trump... pretty much the same story. A man who understands the internet and has the charisma and the means to market himself for his audience. Unintuitive and unemotional things like science are less and less relevant.
And all this is a side quirk of the internet. Yesterday we relied on large and probably somewhat corrupt sources like the news. But at least those sources could be criticized. The scientific community could be loudly hard on a specific source. Other competing sources could be hard on other sources.
But how can the scientific community be hard on a tweet? On a youtube video? Or on almost anything else relevant on the modern internet? Anyone can claim anything to be science and almost no one checks the sources and on controversial issues there are always too many corrupt sources for basic checking to even matter.
I like the internet - it gives me many things I love. I hate what it does to mankind. Fuck you, mankind!
Comments (11)
Who exactly are you angry at?
There is a lot of excellent information made available through the Internet, but there is also a lot of slop. Libraries didn't have the problem of accumulating slop because laudable librarians didn't let it happen. There is a lamentable lack of librarians looking after the Internet.
Just a note, you are part of mankind, so... whatever ails mankind probably ails you too. Me as well.
Fuck you, 90% of mankind!
If there's anything good/bad about the internet then it's the facsimile of human achievements and failures, our wisdom and stupidity, our joy and suffering, our strengths and weaknesses, that it maintains for all to see, rejoice or lament.
But enough about Obama, who ran a brilliant social media campaign.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/did-america-need-a-social-media-president/512405/
You know FDR used radio for his "fireside chats" to speak directly to the American people using the latest technology of his day. Isn't it perfectly natural for politicians to use the latest communication technology? If FDR lived today he'd be on Twitter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireside_chats
Not disagreeing with you here. I'm just relatively angry with the fact that the internet made personal critical evaluation of information so easy that it should have made highly marketed ways of thought less relevant. And it seems like the marketing won in the last decade and it became even more relevant. I'm giving up and just accepting that mankind will probably always fail no matter how much easier technology will make things for us.
Happy 2020s!
I quite agree. The Internet was going to change the world for the better but in many very serious ways made it worse. Just look at China's social credit system and ubiquitous surveillance tied to facial recognition all controlled by AI. And in the US we have our own version of that kind of control, but it's enforced by corporations acting on behalf of the state, instead of by the state directly. That's because in the US we have "freedom." Or what's left of it.
The world's become a techno-dystopia before our eyes.
Quoting Qmeri
Likewise!
I think it's pretty clear, if you use the internet as a tool, it can be a very good thing. If you use it as a crutch, your mind is going to atrophy. And actual usage trends show which way we are heading....