[Rhodes22-list] Chaos - and the Internet

[Herb Parsons]

And I agree with you, but only to a degree. First of all, the internet 
is no more free of "predigested and passed out to be learned ..." 
information than our schools were when we were kids. There's just more 
of it freely available. There ARE those of us who were "free" to break 
out of the mold of only learning what we were taught, but that desire 
had to come from within. That's still the case  today. If one gets all 
their information from salon.com, they are going to be no more balanced 
than the folks that get theirs from rushlimbaugh.com.

However, I view the internet as the "great equalizer" in information, 
While it's not exactly "equal" there is definitely a stronger capability 
that a person with something to say can have a worldwide audience where 
before, it took money, printing presses, news stations, etc to "get your 
word out". Now, the common man has the eyes and ears of literally 
millions. Of course, he/she has to have something to say, and say it 
better than the other millions that have the same opportunity.

But, what a wonderful thing that is!

Robert Skinner wrote:
> Brad Haslett wrote:
>   
>> Bill,
>> ...
>> The internet is a wonderful development in
>> the growth of the human species,
>> but it is mostly a shift in speed...
>>     
>
> Brad,
>
> I disagree with you re. the Internet's impact.
>
> I see it as a qualitative shift in both communications 
> and the organization and dissemination of information.  
>
> Re. Communications:
>
> As Bill pointed out, we are having voluntarily (for our 
> convenience) time-shifted conversations that are 
> automatically archived, not exchanges that require 
> direct and evanescent connections or take days to cycle.  
> Writing is no longer a lost art in this second 
> post-verbal mode.  There is also, and perhaps more 
> importantly, a town-meeting character associated with 
> email lists.  Finally, there are world-wide communities 
> forming that happily cross national boundaries.  These 
> back-channel (as opposed to nationalistic 
> propaganda-tainted) communications are bypassing the 
> politico-military leaders (dictators?) and defusing 
> some of the international tensions as we find common 
> ground with those who our leaders would have us hate.
>
> Re. Information:
>
> The ease of sharing information (as distinct from 
> knowledge), the huge volume of published data, and the 
> manifold pathways by which it travels have combined to 
> radically alter the way we do research on both public 
> and private matters.  Something like being able to 
> instantly view the structure of the L5-S1 spinal disk 
> and the possible consequences of its herniation is 
> something new in the world, and allows the world's 
> population to more effectively learn how to take care 
> of itself.
>
> The art and science of converting information into 
> knowledge is now an even more important skill to learn 
> in the middle grades, as soon as the mind is capable 
> of rational thought.  Learning how to think is even 
> more important for everyone than it was when knowledge 
> was predigested and passed out to be learned by rote.  
> Being able to discriminate between the 
> relevant/important and the chaff is a survival trait 
> when confronted by a deluge of raw and questionable 
> data.
>
> Brad, I think we have passed over a tipping point, 
> and the world has become kaleidoscopic.
>
> /Robert
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