The Edge Annual Question — 2010

M

midcan5

Member
'How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?'

What do you think?

"This year's Question is "How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?" Not "How is the Internet changing the way WE think?" We spent a lot of time going back on forth on "YOU" vs. "WE" and came to the conclusion to go with "YOU", the reason being that Edge is a conversation. "WE" responses tend to come across like expert papers, public pronouncements, or talks delivered from stage.

We wanted people to think about the "Internet", which includes, but is a much bigger subject than the Web, an application on the Internet, or search, browsing, etc., which are apps on the Web. Back in 1996, computer scientist and visionary Danny Hillis pointed out that when it comes to the Internet, "Many people sense this, but don't want to think about it because the change is too profound. Today, on the Internet the main event is the Web. A lot of people think that the Web is the Internet, and they're missing something. The Internet is a brand-new fertile ground where things can grow, and the Web is the first thing that grew there. But the stuff growing there is in a very primitive form. The Web is the old media incorporated into the new medium. It both adds something to the Internet and takes something away.""

http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html
 
I know it's changing the way we live.....

a few weeks ago my daughter borrowed my truck, got in an accident.....no one hurt but the insurance company totaled it.....

so, I get on Craig's list.....I find one almost exactly like it.....200 miles away, behind a guy's garage.....he emails pictures of it to my cell phone.....wife and I decide we like it and we drive to Ohio to test drive it.......he gives me his address and I put it in the Garmon and drive right up to his driveway.......half hour later we are on the way home with a new truck.......

none of that would have happened ten, maybe even five years ago......I would have spent weeks driving around and still would have been stuck with something within twenty miles of where I live......

by the way....another benefit of the internet......when the insurance company made it's first offer I thought it was low, because I had been searching Craig's List and Auto Trader and was seeing higher prices than they offered......I demanded to see the comparibles they were using and one of them was a stripped down, zero options work truck which was hardly similar to my four door, leather interior, every option vehicle......that was taking a serious dent out of the "average"....so I demanded a new appraisal......and yesterday they called and the settlement was up by $2k.....
 
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PostmodernProphet said:
I know it's changing the way we live.....
Click to expand...

But how about our thinking? The one thing it has done to me is I used to be an avid reader who could spend long periods with just book and prose. Now I find myself reading, and then raising some question or thought, and then going to the computer to look something up. From there I may get lost in links and whatnot, and my reading time goes out the window. This is especially true with non fiction.

I also find myself checking, googling that is, to figure out whether I am alone in the universe or others think the same about some issue, and lo and behold saw this just today.

"I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
 
midcan5 said:
But how about our thinking? The one thing it has done to me is I used to be an avid reader who could spend long periods with just book and prose. Now I find myself reading, and then raising some question or thought, and then going to the computer to look something up. From there I may get lost in links and whatnot, and my reading time goes out the window. This is especially true with non fiction.

I also find myself checking, googling that is, to figure out whether I am alone in the universe or others think the same about some issue, and lo and behold saw this just today.

"I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Click to expand...

is that from Biden?.....
 
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