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> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhigh
by kryogen1c 7y ago
> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one.
utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed.
im kind of speechless. this fits so well with everything: the degredation of media, the explosion of tracking and near-total destruction of privacy no one cares about, the most-used social media (twitter, fb, ig) having the smallest information exchange, the prevalence of easily disprovable conspiracy theories.
people have always been irrational, emotional animals. im not sure why we thought itd be different now.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it It's a combination of the confirmation bias of addiction and not being skeptical upfront about technology. It's sad, but empowering once you realize it.
- nonesuchluck 7y ago> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed. Interestingly, there was a class of people who never missed that from day one. "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," our teachers warned us. We scoffed: if we could be so stupid. No one believes anything you read on the internet. Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.
- titzer 7y ago> We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. And the "traditional" media scrambled, falling all over themselves, desperately trying to become relevant as their business model disappeared, moving their content online, competing in the cacophonic nightmare of screaming known as the internet. Little did they know that adding more signal to the noise just tricked us into believe that noise was signal.
- brlewis 7y ago> We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. Speak for yourself. I only believe things I see on the Internet if they fit my preconceived ideas.
- searchableguy 7y agoHow do I make people go back to the old days?
- belorn 7y agoBring back national TV broadcast as peoples primary source of information?
- paloaltokid 7y ago> Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet. These days, if something is NOT on the internet, it is suspect. Even if the evidence is in a well-researched book, if people can't find a URL for it, they immediately dismiss arguments out of hand. You see it all the time on this forum as well.
- coffeecat 7y agoI once had a disagreement with a colleague about a claim in a lab manual for undergraduates. About 10 seconds into the discussion, his instinctive reaction was "Does the internet say that's right?" After speaking with the professor that teaches the class, his instinct was also to check that the internet says it's right before updating the lab manual. I had a simple argument based on a well-known formula, but ultimately it's the internet that decides whether it's right or not.
- Gunax 7y agoPerhaps the internet is best understood as a reasonable shorthand for general consensus.
- carapace 7y agoWell, most of the people who made it, and the early adopters tended towards being rational, eh? Boiling frogs and Eternal September and all that.