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Will the internet liberate or aid the control of knowledge?

 
 
OGIONIK
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2009 11:18 pm
@Brandon9000,
wikipedia for example.

amazing resource.

0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2009 11:50 pm
knowledge is a function of intelligence which is a function of intellectual training, I don't see how the unreliable information database known as the internet helps matters. It is too easy to delude ones self into thinking that they have intelligence, buzz words and data come too easily on the internet. we are also increasingly having problems separating facts from fiction due to the internet, which again indicates that knowledge is in decline.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 12:43 am
@The Pentacle Queen,
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.
OGIONIK
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 12:54 am
@georgeob1,
knowledge is whats the word?

constantly accelerating..

the better the tools the bigger the breakthroughs.
0 Replies
 
Sglass
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 12:58 am
@georgeob1,
oh georgeob1 are you saying that there is nothing new under the sun, just degrees thereof. That all the great thoughts have been thought, and all inventions have been invented and that we are just going to the next stage.
OGIONIK
 
  0  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 01:56 am
@Sglass,
another thing i might add, there is only ONE truth

unless u start going into different dimensions or soemthing.

until then all falsehoods will be weeded out.

but then as technology advances so do theatrics, video and photo editing, people rely on one news sources etc and lies spread.

but ehh.
Sglass
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 02:17 am
@OGIONIK,
I hear the sound of one hand clapping.
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 07:49 am
Maybe the internet dies:

Quote:
there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html?ref=weekinreview
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 16 Feb, 2009 01:43 pm
@Sglass,
Sglass wrote:

oh georgeob1 are you saying that there is nothing new under the sun, just degrees thereof. That all the great thoughts have been thought, and all inventions have been invented and that we are just going to the next stage.

More or less. There are occasional new ideas and many, many new applications of old ones. I don't however, suscribe to the onward and upward unlimited possibility scenario suggested by others here. Just as there are new revolutions that bring us new possibilites perhaps equivalent to those of the alphabets of three plus milennia ago, there are enduring built in limits on human achievement and actions.
0 Replies
 
 

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