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Technology: Fueling Hatred and Misunderstanding
Red Leader. writes "This Thomas Friedman op-ed entitled "Global Village Idiocy" and this article by George Packer, entitled "When Here Sees There," both touch on some interesting observations regarding technology's impact on tolerance and understanding. My favourite quote from Friedman's piece is "the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information."" We've previously posted the Packer piece, but combined with other story, I think it's worth a retread.
The Internet does nothing by itself (in fact, it could be argued the Internet does nothing period, but I digress). The Internet doesn't make information/rumor/lies, it's the people who use it. All that's going on here is he's being smacked in the face, apparently for the first time in his life, with the true nature of humanity, which is particularly easy to observe on the Internet. For those who haven't been keeping up:
People are this idiotic all on their own, all the time. People aren't just willing to fall into the "us vs. them" mentality, they're eager. All the Internet does is accelerate the process.
On the Internet, no-one can hide from the true nature of humanity. Do something about it or deal with it.
(phew, I needed that...)
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
At least you have sites like /.
Intolerance and extremism may run rampant no the rest of the internet but not here!
Oh, wait...
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
I know this is OT, but have any of you noticed the latest shit that the Guardians of Content are pulling: running space and paper-wasting graphical adverts down the side of the printer friendly versions of articles!
I guess being able to track our identities isn't enough for the NY Times.
And, seriously, a STARBUCKS ad to accompany THIS particular article? C'mon!