A Question of Volume and Quality
on
The Regulon
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· Score: 1
The idea of information of an ecosystem appears to me to be flawed, in the sense that information can't really be consumed like codfish. And even if there was an unlimited amount of information, the impact on the environment is not apparent. The problem is rather a human problem, and a social one. With the increasing amount of information, not only is it impossible for an individual to assimilate it all, he or she can't even scan it all, to see what is worth assimilating and what is not. The social impact in North America is that each individual is separated from the others by the information he or she possesses and the others do not.
While this may appear to be a "bad thing", there are too many examples of nations composed of individuals with relatively limited and congruent data profiles, which wreak bloody havoc on other nations with their own limited (but different) ones.
For this reason, I don't think the information explosion is inherently bad for humans; what is lost in individual certainty is gained in tolerance and openness.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of information of an ecosystem appears to me to be flawed, in the sense that information can't really be consumed like codfish. And even if there was an unlimited amount of information, the impact on the environment is not apparent. The problem is rather a human problem, and a social one. With the increasing amount of information, not only is it impossible for an individual to assimilate it all, he or she can't even scan it all, to see what is worth assimilating and what is not. The social impact in North America is that each individual is separated from the others by the information he or she possesses and the others do not.
While this may appear to be a "bad thing", there are too many examples of nations composed of individuals with relatively limited and congruent data profiles, which wreak bloody havoc on other nations with their own limited (but different) ones.
For this reason, I don't think the information explosion is inherently bad for humans; what is lost in individual certainty is gained in tolerance and openness.