How has the Internet changed the way you think?

by Brian on 01-09-2010

in science,web

For 2010′s Edge Annual Question, John Brockman asked 165 of the smartest people he knows “How has the Internet changed the way you think? ”

[It's a familiar topic around here... and I actually answered the question when I wrote about last year's.]

A surprising number of answers are about sex. More than a few antagonize or avoid the question, humourously and intelligently… There are too many disappointing clichés about distractions and short attention spans… And I haven’t seen the prefix “cyber” and the word “virtual” so much in a long time.

Most importantly, there are many brilliant gems in the bunch.

I picked out some of the entries that are most relevant what I normally cover (and I tried to curate them into some kind of sensible order, resulting in some really good ones being left off my list):

And there’s still way too much left on the cutting room floor. You canperuse the index of 165 entries, or you can just go ahead and read all 130,000 words.

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Tagged as: brain, epistemology, internet, mind, philosophy, psychology, technology, think21st, thinking, third culture

  • ronny

    Used to be we had encyclopedias and other books at our disposal, and friends and family to rely on for opinions. The net, though, is much more than just an extension of these resources – it's a limitless reservoir for everyone to tap into and to contribute. It's becoming (has become?) mankind's collective mind. It's an extension of me, and has profoundly effected how I think.

    Contrary to what some claim, it doesn't prevent me from reaching into the recesses of my mind for old facts, nor does it prevent me from being desirous of mentally retaining new facts. Instead, it's an incredibly useful “add-on” to my mind and sometime over the past decade or so, it's become seemlessly integrated with me. With us.

    Those of us at a certain age are in a wonderfully unique position to witness what, I believe, is a monumental paradigm shift in human development: our parents live in the old world, relying on the net as little as they can get away with, yet our children grew up not knowing an existence without the net. The way our children think compared to how our parents think is, I believe, starkly contrasted as a result.

    I'm struggling to find the words to describe that difference rather than just stating that it's so… a simple inference might be that my parents might argue for hours whether it was Charleton Heston or Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (before they finally call and ask me!), while my kids will immediately head to the net **without even consciously deciding that it's an alternative mode of uncovering knowledge** and within seconds be able to relay every minute detail about that film. That is nothing less than a fundamental shift in how the net has changed how we think about thinking.

    I consider cell phones, gps, etc to be all part of this shift, part of “the net”. Our kids see themselves much more as part of a global collective, I believe, than any generation before them. And those of us who still remember a time before, well, our memories (even this post) will become part of the collective memory that serves to let them “remember” that things were once different.

    Anyone who believes the net is overrated, and many still do, are sadly missing a grand opportunity to witness this monumental change in how mankind thinks – an opportunity which they are uniquely qualified to observe from a spectacular vantage point that will never again exist.

    I suppose there were those who once considered being bi-pedal to be overrated.

    I love being around at this exact time in history.

  • http://brianfrank.ca Brian Frank

    I used to get annoyed when people expressed doubt about whether there was “real value” on the web (or blame the internet for things people do with information they found on it). Now I just laugh. Maybe in a year or two I'll feel too sorry for them to laugh.

    Used to be that people compared it to TV. Lately the printing press has been the point of comparison. But it's even bigger than that. The printing press was just about scale and efficiency; the internet makes decisions for us.

  • http://www.openworld.com Openworld

    I think the responses above miss the boat. The big change is that the Internet offers – finally – a way for people to project various visions of future idealities into the feed. If Thomas Petersen's insights catch on (http://j.mp/5c4lmO ), the Internet will be generating practical bridges to the “far shores” we are envisaging.

    Best,

    Mark Frazier
    @openworld @buildership @peerlearning

  • http://brianfrank.ca Brian Frank

    Interesting stuff Mark, though I do have suggestion relating to that post: I think the concepts in it are too inert.

    We shouldn't look at information as static units; that overlooks the temporal aspect of information, i.e. information is something that happens — something we use.

    Our brains don't just approach matter “as both discrete objects as well as a whole,” our brains also approach matter as stuff in a process of happening and about to happen (e.g. subconsciously asking “what can I do with this?”).

    Likewise information. We don't just pick up nuggets of data and put them in a little satchel, we're drawn to information that has done something for us in the past and which we tacitly expect to be useful in the future.

    That's how we'll learn to cope with proliferation. We get better at organizing information around we we can do with it.

    At least it's how I've learned. I think more in terms of projects (or problems to solve), rather than categories, and a lot of the difficulties coping eventually dissolved.

  • http://www.openworld.com Openworld

    Brian,

    It's worth a look at several of the Openworld comments on the above “Slaves of the Feed” link.

    The comments relate to defining and then tossing idealities into information flow, and reeling back proposed narratives (in a fractal, nested form) on steps toward them.

    Once the paths are mapped out, individuals and groups can use vision->action systems such as these to implement–

    1) Virtual tribes as builders of Resilient Communities http://j.mp/85WkqF

    2) Serious games where actual communities partner to implement envisioned futures: http://j.mp/6T1Nn6

    What do you think of these project-centered ways to actively engage with the feed, after defining imagined futures as Thomas Petersen suggested?

    Best,

    Mark Frazier
    @openworld @buildership @peerlearning

  • http://brianfrank.ca Brian Frank

    You're right, the comments paint a different picture, with more in common with my suggestion. I haven't quite managed to access all of the abstract vocabulary yet but I'll try to get more in sync with it as your conversation progresses.

    My own thinking & writing tends to focus more on observing and explaining. I make a lot of projections too but I try to frame them as hypotheses to test my thinking.

    I'm fairly committed to the belief that we need to trust our natural embodied intelligence more.

    The human mind already manages to organize a potentially infinite variety of information from experience and compose it into meaning etc before we're even conscious of it [this is what I want to understand better before exploring further]. In other epochs people have demonstrated an astonishing ability to adapt to massive proliferations of information without quite understanding how or why.

    A few philosophers like Plato and Peirce might have appreciated what was happening in previous epochs, which is how they manage to articulate new ideas and systems for dealing with the changing nature of knowledge, but their appreciation would have come after their minds had adapted.

    What enabled them to see what almost everyone else missed? And how do we assess whether we're like them, or whether we're part of the crowd that doesn't see the underlying shift?

  • http://www.openworld.com Openworld

    Brian,

    >>What enabled them to see what almost everyone else missed? And how do we assess whether we're like them, or whether we're part of the crowd that doesn't see the underlying shift?

    Great questions! Peirce noted that we approach a full understanding of a thing through the process of mapping the full range of its conceivable effects. My hunch is that the simplest answer your question can be found in the willingness of a person to put his or her reputation at risk by making a public prediction of an unexpected and surprising effect, in case:result:rule form. This boldness may spring from neurochemistry and/or a culture that is confident enough to honor speculative, rigorous explorations. In either case, the only way we can know whether we're seeing something that almost everyone has missed is to put our reasoned speculations into the mix, and see whether our predictions indeed do fare well.

    Best,

    Mark
    @openworld @buildership @peerlearning

  • http://www.openworld.com Openworld

    Brian,

    Followup to earlier comment – I think you'll enjoy this on ways to accelerate discovery through serendipity:

    http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/article…

    Best,

    Mark
    Openworld

  • http://www.openworld.com Openworld

    Brian,

    Followup to earlier comment – I think you'll enjoy this on ways to accelerate discovery through serendipity:

    http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/article…

    Best,

    Mark
    Openworld

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