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I'll tell you a secret: The world is pretty much the same as it's always been, including the people. There are just more of them. People don't deal with chan

I'll tell you a secret: The world is pretty much the same as it's always been, including the people. There are just more of them. People don't deal with change well, but choosing to believe that the present is an exception to how the human world has operated for millennia only has a short term benefit - validation for those of us in the present. The negative effects of this belief include cutting one's self off from all the experiences of all the humans who came before us. To learn how to deal with "Internet 2.1" in your life, consider reading some Aristotle, Plato, Alvin Toffler or Eric Higgs.

tomc1985 7y ago
The world didn't have mass many-to-many communication as little as 20-30 years ago. There are a lot of changes in play that the current breed of humans simply don't know how to deal with, in addition to the fact that there are simply more of us. See: resurgence flat-earthers, neonazis, and other previously-buried-by-irrelevance groups, resurgence of measles + polio, seemingly endless toxic videos dispensed to young children via the 'next video' and 'recommendation' engines, and so on Sure human behavior is the same as it ever was, but never before has it been so easy for me to affect some random schmuck in France, for example
- Accujack 7y ago
  >The world didn't have mass many-to-many communication as little as 20-30 years ago. There are a lot of changes in play that the current breed of humans simply don't know how to deal with All humans, or the ones you've met? ;) You prove my point for my by mentioning all those groups... those sorts of people have ALWAYS been around, and probably will be as long as humanity exists. Ever hear of the Luddites? Or the Optimates in ancient Rome? Certainly, mass media and the internet are new iterations of information distribution, but so were the printing press, the printed word itself, and even bardic songs going back centuries. Each time, the ability to spread information farther, faster and easier Changed Things. There's a comfort in wanting to believe we live in an age that breaks all the rules, so a lot of people soothe themselves by thinking that it's ok if they're afraid of or not comfortable in the world because after all it's something no one has ever had to deal with before. That lie gives us a comforting feeling, and people prefer a comforting lie over a cold truth anytime. Sure, the ability to affect a random person in another country is sort of new, but that's an artifact of the present level of technology we have. Having new technology to deal with is actually the status quo of human history. We just keep inventing. Going back to the past, you could argue that the first printed bibles made it possible to spread a religion faster and farther than ever before, which is true... but the age in which the printing press was invented was not that unlike all the other ages of man... looking back, it was a significant change, but not an all changing event like the discovery of extra terrestrial life or the human machine singularity would be. We can deal with the world just like we always have.
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    > There's a comfort in wanting to believe we live in an age that breaks all the rules, so a lot of people soothe themselves by thinking that it's ok if they're afraid of or not comfortable in the world because after all it's something no one has ever had to deal with before. That lie gives us a comforting feeling, and people prefer a comforting lie over a cold truth anytime You are right that the printing press was very disruptive for its time. But I would say that every day since the beginning of the industrial revolution is living in a time that "breaks all the rules" as you say I could retort that it is comforting to call me the crazy one but I still believe that this age of instant, accessible global communication is indeed unique and that, psychologically, we as a species are not ready to deal with it. All throughout history the groups that you and I speak of were always relatively localized; it was very difficult to build a movement that affected all of Europe, for example. Not impossible -- ideas were and are as infectious as ever -- but beset with much much more entropy Could Russia have facilitated the kind of propaganda/misinformation campaign that it did for the 2016 elections without any of its ever needing to leave their Moscow office in WWII? All else held constant, could these flat-earther/antivax morons have reached nearly as many people and had their movements spread as far and wide as they have in the age of the printing press? No, because entropy. And even when movements did (Lutheranism, for example), it took years to take hold.
mindcrime 7y ago
Definitely read Toffler. He saw so much of what people are talking about today, as far back as the late 60's. The details have changed, of course, but a lot of the basic principles are exactly what he talked about in Future Shock.

tomc1985 7y ago

The world didn't have mass many-to-many communication as little as 20-30 years ago. There are a lot of changes in play that the current breed of humans simply don't know how to deal with, in addition to the fact that there are simply more of us. See: resurgence flat-earthers, neonazis, and other previously-buried-by-irrelevance groups, resurgence of measles + polio, seemingly endless toxic videos dispensed to young children via the 'next video' and 'recommendation' engines, and so on Sure human behavior is the same as it ever was, but never before has it been so easy for me to affect some random schmuck in France, for example

Accujack 7y ago
>The world didn't have mass many-to-many communication as little as 20-30 years ago. There are a lot of changes in play that the current breed of humans simply don't know how to deal with All humans, or the ones you've met? ;) You prove my point for my by mentioning all those groups... those sorts of people have ALWAYS been around, and probably will be as long as humanity exists. Ever hear of the Luddites? Or the Optimates in ancient Rome? Certainly, mass media and the internet are new iterations of information distribution, but so were the printing press, the printed word itself, and even bardic songs going back centuries. Each time, the ability to spread information farther, faster and easier Changed Things. There's a comfort in wanting to believe we live in an age that breaks all the rules, so a lot of people soothe themselves by thinking that it's ok if they're afraid of or not comfortable in the world because after all it's something no one has ever had to deal with before. That lie gives us a comforting feeling, and people prefer a comforting lie over a cold truth anytime. Sure, the ability to affect a random person in another country is sort of new, but that's an artifact of the present level of technology we have. Having new technology to deal with is actually the status quo of human history. We just keep inventing. Going back to the past, you could argue that the first printed bibles made it possible to spread a religion faster and farther than ever before, which is true... but the age in which the printing press was invented was not that unlike all the other ages of man... looking back, it was a significant change, but not an all changing event like the discovery of extra terrestrial life or the human machine singularity would be. We can deal with the world just like we always have.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  > There's a comfort in wanting to believe we live in an age that breaks all the rules, so a lot of people soothe themselves by thinking that it's ok if they're afraid of or not comfortable in the world because after all it's something no one has ever had to deal with before. That lie gives us a comforting feeling, and people prefer a comforting lie over a cold truth anytime You are right that the printing press was very disruptive for its time. But I would say that every day since the beginning of the industrial revolution is living in a time that "breaks all the rules" as you say I could retort that it is comforting to call me the crazy one but I still believe that this age of instant, accessible global communication is indeed unique and that, psychologically, we as a species are not ready to deal with it. All throughout history the groups that you and I speak of were always relatively localized; it was very difficult to build a movement that affected all of Europe, for example. Not impossible -- ideas were and are as infectious as ever -- but beset with much much more entropy Could Russia have facilitated the kind of propaganda/misinformation campaign that it did for the 2016 elections without any of its ever needing to leave their Moscow office in WWII? All else held constant, could these flat-earther/antivax morons have reached nearly as many people and had their movements spread as far and wide as they have in the age of the printing press? No, because entropy. And even when movements did (Lutheranism, for example), it took years to take hold.

mindcrime 7y ago

Definitely read Toffler. He saw so much of what people are talking about today, as far back as the late 60's. The details have changed, of course, but a lot of the basic principles are exactly what he talked about in Future Shock.