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Social networks, though, have since colonized the web for television's values. From Facebook to Instagram, the medium refocuses our attention on videos and images, rewarding emotional appeals—'like' buttons—over rational ones. Instead of a quest for knowledge, it engages us in an endless zest for instant approval from an audience, for which we are constantly but unconsciouly performing. (It's telling that, while Google began life as a PhD thesis, Facebook started as a tool to judge classmates' appearances.) It reduces our curiosity by showing us exactly what we already want and think, based on our profiles and preferences. Enlightenment's motto of 'Dare to know' has become 'Dare not to care to know.'
It is a development that further proves the words of French philosopher Guy Debord, who wrote that, if pre-capitalism was about 'being', and capitalism about 'having', in late-capitalism what matters is only 'appearing'—appearing rich, happy, thoughtful, cool and cosmopolitan. It's hard to open Instagram without being struck by the accuracy of his diagnosis.
Now the challenge is to save Wikipedia and its promise of a free and open collection of all human knowledge amid the conquest of new and old television—how to collect and preserve knowledge when nobody cares to know. Television has even infected Wikipedia itself—today many of the most popular entries tend to revolve around television series or their cast.
This doesn't mean it is time to give up. But we need to understand that the decline of the web and thereby of the Wikipedia is part of a much larger civilizational shift which has just started to unfold.
Wired: How Social Media Endangers Knowledge
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Monday October 30 2017, @04:06PM (5 children)
This article is really stupid.
Really? People -implying most people- used to "search for knowledge"? In which parallel dimension?
Anybody who has even a bit of life experience knows that MOST people don't want facts and truths. They don't want knowledge, besides the basics necessary for their everyday lives. Look around you: there are so many ways to use your computer to learn stuff, it's amazing, much better than before the internet, and I'm old enough to appreciate the positive difference. But most people will NEVER take advantage of it.
The knowledge-seekers described in the article were a small minority, even when knowledge became more accessible thanks to books then thanks to cheaper printed books. I'll grant you that once books were widely available many more people had access to it, but those people were still a minority, and still are.
Do you really think that before Facebook -and the like- there was no "contest of popularity"? Everytime I read about US high-schools, one of the main complaint is about that aspect!
Then what about "what matters is only ‘appearing’"? Yeah, it really NEVER was a thing, no siree! Seriously? Apparences have been a thing FOREVER! Has the writer never read an older book or studied history? What about fashion? I get it! Fashion was invented in the 2000s. What about luxury goods? Showing off for the neigbours was an old idea by the time of the old romans. Etc.
Then the article states that there has been a "a shift from rationality to emotions". Ha ha ha! LOL. When have people been more rational than emotional? What about all the B.S. of religions, politics using the good ol' "divide to conquer" strategy and calls to emotion ("think of the children!" and the like), etc.?
The article also states that the internet was first created as a tool for knowledge, ok, I'll grant you that. So can be said for books for instance. And you know what? Plenty of books are for entertainement (nothing wrong with that BTW), many are full of stupid crap, false knowledge, lies, and all the bad aspects of humanity.
Internet (by which we really mean the web) is just a tool, humans use their tools for good and bad, serious stuff and entertainment, it always has been so and probably always will be (unless we evolve drastically).
Sigh.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday October 30 2017, @04:32PM
What has changed dramatically is the reach of the popularity contest. It used to mostly stop at the door of the school, office, or your front door (until select days when that door was open to visitors). The contest was controlled by the clock, and the friends showing off from far would take days to weeks between updates.
Now it's constant, even accumulating in people's phones while they sleep, to hit them in the face first thing the next morning, and every two minutes until they sleep.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday October 30 2017, @05:52PM (2 children)
What a bunch of elitist clap trap. I notice
Any question comes up in a group of people in almost any modern setting, and 5 phones light up as people look up the answer.
People look things up on a whim, learn to discard crap search results and go for the the quality sources.
We uses to have encyclopedias, perpetually out of date, and enormously expensive, suitable only for children doing school papers.
No one could afford the keep them current.
No one had time or means to travel to a library to find out how high you can suck water uphill, or how many much it cost to ship 30 tons of wheat from Kansas to Chicago.
Now its in everyone's hands, used constantly. And you don't even notice it. How is that possible?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:35PM
I believe the problem is that people have not, in fact, learned to discard crap search results. Wikipedia's editors say it, so it must be true. The Oracle at Google says it, so it must be true.
I suppose that depends on what we might mean by a crap search result. I feel enormously lucky to live during this time when I have so many large tables of numbers and unit conversion calculators right at my fingertips.
What's lacking is the same thing that's always been lacking. It's the same thing those expensive encyclopedias never helped with. Critical thinking remains unpopular.
I don't really fault humans for it, however. They've just barely evolved the capacity for culture, written language, and coherent systems of logic such as maths. Give them another 100,000 years. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's perhaps building the foundation for what might evolve in 100,000 years. Certainly that is a worthwhile pursuit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @10:40PM
Now its in everyone's hands, used constantly. And you don't even notice it. How is that possible?
Probably because it has a negative effect on our politics.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday October 30 2017, @09:30PM
In France.
With good food and wine, nice girls all around, with what else can the people fight their boredom?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford