On Aug 30, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Jon Louis Mann wrote: >> The essence of reasonable debate is that the participants >> are armed with >> sufficient education and discipline to resist irrationality >> and form >> arguments that provoke greater understanding, knowledge and >> perhaps wisdom. >> For many years now, I have believed that this is one of the >> ways in which >> the Internet is shaping the long-term future. Despite the >> flame wars, >> gossip and general nonsense that happens in on-line >> communities, I do >> believe that many people are rediscovering the value of >> argument, the power >> of diverse viewpoints in problem-solving. This is the >> stuff that stimulates >> creativity, I believe -- creativity which, even if limited >> to a minority, >> can have a profound positive impact on all. >> Nick > > i used to believe in the "free exchange of ideas", nick, but it only > occurs when you have rational debate. the internet has become the > dis-information highway, and there are more lies than fact. you are > correct it can be a tool for empowerment, enlightenment and > education, with participants who are open to civilized discourse. > the person who introduced me to this site is responsible for turning > me from pro-palestinian to ardent zionist. > jon
I believe both of these scenarios are correct, to some extent, in that each is happening separately from the other. There is definitely a renaissance of sorts on the "intelligent" side of the Internet that is rapidly gaining momentum, as well as growing deeper and firmer roots in rational discourse and objectivity. There is a more or less infinite idea-space for rational and informative discussion of just about anything imaginable, and new forums are created on an almost constant basis. I've told everyone I know, some of them more than once (and, for a few, enough times that they've gotten sick of hearing it), that we haven't even scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg that is the Internet's potential social impact on our culture, and the most interesting developments in how it reshapes how we communicate, interact, and even *think* haven't been discovered yet and won't be for some time. The concept of open, uncensored (for the most part), many-to-many instant communication is, IMHO, more fundamentally world-altering than the invention of movable type and the ability to publish books faster than the medieval Church could burn them, and the story of how it's going to change every aspect of our lives hasn't been written yet. And yet, there's a very fundamentally dedicated resistance to that ascendancy of the "democracy of ideas". There's a very strong anti- scientific and anti-knowledge tradition in this country's culture that still has to be overcome, even now. It's not nearly as strong as it was in the days before geek/nerd chic and the discovery that thinking people did indeed have the power to reshape society, but it's still there, and in the majority of minds, science and knowledge are suspect and potentially dangerous. The most positive thing that can be said about it is that the exponentially increasing freedom people outside that anti-knowledge culture have to analyze it critically and poke holes in its arguments has forced it to abandon most of its historical pretenses of rationality and retreat to a much more overt refusal to accept that they've lost the debate. (The modern "dominionist" religious movement is one of the best examples of that that I can find -- a religious movement that has declared, "this far shalt thou go, and no further", drawn its metaphorical line in the sand, and declared a guerilla war of insurgency against the freedom not to be subject to its self-asserted authority.) The darker side of that "culture war" mentality is that it becomes progressively more inclined to "stop talking and start shooting", and we have several examples of modern domestic terrorism in recent years as proof that the fringes of that movement, at least, are beginning to do exactly that. There is also an increasing (and fatally belated, IMHO) awareness among major world governments that that freedom of instant many-to- many communication makes government itself increasingly irrelevant, and many governments (including the US government) are taking increasingly restrictive measures to intercept, monitor, data-mine, and otherwise at least passively interfere with that freedom to communicate, and a few either already have *actively* interfered (China's Great Firewall), or are actively planning to interfere, with that communication in a much more aggressive fashion. Who's going to win that race is a question I'm not confident answering, but my feeling is that enough communication has *already* happened that the cat is effectively out of the bag, and any government daring to interfere now will only discredit itself to the point where it outright invites open revolt. The only sure thing is that this is a one-way trip .. the past is not coming back, and we will, one way or the other, find ourselves in a future that only guarantees to be interesting. (Maybe in the sense of the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." :) "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends." -- Gandalf _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
