On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 04:15:12PM -0700, James McCartney wrote:
> Because ARPA probably would have rejected funding for a worldwide system
> for the interchange of kitty pictures and porn.
That's only the first step. According to Benjamin Bayart, "CEO" of
the non-profit ISP "French Data Network" (incidentally the oldest
French ISP still alive today), divided the netizens in roughly 6
categories:
1. Customer. The web is good for buying things.
1.5 LolCat. The net is good for exchanging jokes, virus-ridden
power-points, and watching porn.
2. Reader. Oh, the Times is online too! And while we're at it, there
seems to be some interesting articles about pet peeves here, and
there…
3. Complainer. This article is no good. I'll tell'em! <scribbles a
short, often uninteresting rant.>
4. Commenter. That one happens after being bashed on the skull often
enough to notice that some types of comments are more constructive
than others. Make structured, on topic replies.
5. Author. Starts one's own blog after noticing that ones replies get
more and more elaborate, and one's ideas flesh out.
6. Moderator. Manages several authors in a community blog or such.
It typically takes several years to go from LolCat to Author. And of
course, even a Moderator can revert back to watching dancing bunnies
from time to time. But in the end, the net is rather good at
producing trained public debaters. Historically that was the
privilege of politicians, journalists, and union leaders.
What ARPA accepted is something that may some day drive its own
government out.
As for augmenting the human intellect, I hope we will see improvements
over the current peer-review-then-publish model of doing science. (An
obvious idea would be continuous crowd review, which would mark papers
as they become obsolete, invalidated, confirmed, superseded…).
Loup.
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