The Pentacle Queen wrote:
With increasing communication systems, it is now almost taken for granted that we can find out most things we want from the internet. Presumably this will increase... in the assumed progression of the liberation of knowledge.
I just wanted to question this presumption. I think, in some respects, the more knowledge the internet contains, not only does the less 'accurate' this knowledge become, but the more blind the idea of having 'the world's knowledge at the touch of a button,' makes us.
Not that censorship is a new thing, of course, but in my opinion, the information NOT PUBLISHED can potentially be as dangerous as what IS published. For if we are under the illusion of knowing everything, then what is kept from us by corporations/governments can shape what we do know. We are under a false omnipotence.
Interestingly Socrates made essentially the same argument with respect to the then fairly new use of the Greek phonetic alphabet and the attendant widespread replacement of the Greek oral tradition and fairly narrowly available education in rhetoric and philosophy with written records, histories, and philosophical analyses. He viewed the written word (however much it increased the accessibility of information, and altered human ways of thinking) as a fixed thing that restricted thought and limited analysis of the ideas and information so recorded - much as many today view computer & network provided information. Happily his pupil Plato kept the only extant records of Socrates' words and himself rejected his former master's teachings on the subject. In turn Plato's pupil, Aristotle completed the first systematic written record of natural philosophy and science.
Perhaps the question today is whether the computer and web revolution is analogous to that accomplished by the introduction of compact but complete phonetic alphabet systems which enabled the transformation of human thinking that resulted from the simple act of reading.
