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: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:23PM
...but "series" was plural, one man stood as our only hope against the onrushing tide of barbarity, until the wine-dark sea engulfed him.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:53PM (8 children)
The real challenge is the people who care that nobody IS to know this or that - and have too much time on their hands, to wage their wikiwar of attrition.
Encouraging this crowd is the opposite of "collect and preserve", all empty platitudes notwithstanding.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 30 2017, @06:12PM
I'd be more concerned if Pubmed [nih.gov] was at risk. I hope you can at least count on that as a place to start for falsifiable information.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday October 30 2017, @06:38PM (6 children)
There always have been and always will be people that sequester knowledge and power for their own benefit. Rational thought came into being in the midst of countless princes and priests, obsessed with maintaining their fiefdoms.
The question is: how? How did facts come to be more respected than ideas? And how has this tide turned against rationality?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @08:02PM (5 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday October 30 2017, @08:16PM (4 children)
Au contraire, mon Petit Four khallow. It is precisely the opposite. Our ideas determine the viewpoints that make (from the Latin, facio, "to make") our facts. Facts are not simple, nor are they given.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @08:35PM (3 children)
It's what sticks to our viewpoints (including our intellect and emotions). Ideas are formed or adopted due to interaction of our viewpoints with the world. Perhaps the idea is some implicit assumption - that's a viewpoint-based idea. Perhaps, the idea comes from communication with other viewpoints or our perception of the exterior world. That's a combination of viewpoint interacting with reality.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:08AM (2 children)
It is this alleged "interaction with the world" that is the problem, since the "world" is a world of facts, but those facts are manufactured by the concepts that give those facts form. This is the philosophical position of "idealism". It holds that there is no "pure experience" of the world as it is in itself. So you see how that causes problems for the various naive forms of empiricism?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:08AM (1 child)
Hence, introduction of viewpoint.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:17AM
Yes, but if "viewpoint" (a vague word, philosophically) is not grounded, and determines facts, we are left with a position of epistemological relativism. And since we are there, my relativistic position is to reject such a relativism. Prove me wrong!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday October 30 2017, @04:00PM (15 children)
Google (and the other search engines) are not better when it comes to the fact here. They are all endangering knowledge. Facebook and the social medias might at a glance seem more trivial and shallow, but they are more or less all the same really. After all why learn things anymore when it's all just one (or a couple) search query away. All you need is the very basics of knowledge, you still have to know enough to know what to look for but not so much beyond that. That said it might also be the case that a lot of what is searchable and graspable is just the basics, and trivial matters -- such as television shows or all you ever wanted to know about your favorite celebrity, and not actual advanced knowledge, but then most people don't need in depth advanced knowledge about most things and are probably fine with just the basics.
So they could all be the enemies of knowledge, alternatively the great equalizer ... sadly the equal part is that we are at risk of all becoming equally stupid instead of equally smart.
From what I have heard, and read, Wikipedia has become something of cesspool. Moderators "owning" their topic and turning them into some kind of reverse-edit-wars to keep them as they want them. It also still suffers from the drawback of almost all digital internet content -- you can't trust it's permanency so you can't really quote it. Making it less worth as far as knowledge is concerned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday October 30 2017, @05:58PM (9 children)
Google primarily serves up links based on popularity. This means, inevitably, that the links thus presented will be the ones that have managed to attract those at the peak of the curve - which will be at the median. Not the worst, and not the best. Most likely, the easiest to digest (which is not a set matching most accurate, unfortunately.)
There are almost always better links deeper in the search results, but they probably won't be on the front page, because the most informative and detail-rich pages aren't "sound-bitey" enough to be attractive to the limited attention span of the majority – clicks from non-first page results are much rarer. Likewise, a great product that is marketed poorly or not popular yet (or ever)... you aren't likely to find it with a Google search unless you search very specifically for it. And of course there are the myriad attempts, some successful, to game the search engine algorithms, plus those that directly impose themselves on us via paid placement, that further bias the results away from "best" and towards "tricksie little linkseses."
At one time, curated link pages / sites presented a hope of actually bringing the best of the web to us, but they're hugely effort-intensive, while search engines / web crawlers are, at least comparatively so, easy. Yahoo tried, and fell on its face when they tried to monetize it; there was an open project to do this as well, with volunteer curators, but I can't find it or any mention of it using several Google searches for variations on "curated lists of links", which would be funny, except it isn't, really.
Perhaps when someone get some really high-capability deep learning leveraged in with a web crawler we'll have a chance at a "best results" type of search.
Until then, it's unrelenting mediocrity pretty much all the way down (the first page.)
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday October 30 2017, @06:34PM
The Open Directory Project
Now closed, static mirror presently located here. [dmoztools.net]
As I said above – this just seems to be too difficult a task for people to deal with.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 30 2017, @07:07PM (7 children)
Tell that to all the Youtube channel creators Google demonitized or outright shut down for wrongthink.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:00AM (6 children)
First it was the Nazis, and now TMB is defending demons? Well, I never thought we would see such an end of days!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:06AM (5 children)
Well I am a Linux guy... We're all about the daemons.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:12AM (4 children)
What a coincidence! So was Socrates! And speaking of the persecution of philosophers, who spam-modded me this time?
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:24AM (2 children)
Nobody unless someone's already dealt with it. No recent posts by you are currently modded Spam.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:39AM (1 child)
Hmm, still "down by 10" as they say. Are you sure? I had to search, but then got the latest mod message today, which revealed what I suspected: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=22117&cid=584998 [soylentnews.org]
Modded Spam. I think I know who the culprit is. I recommend that admin go easy on him, since he is obviously quite young, naive, and stupid. And a Nazi sympathizing alt-right hanger-on. And he has very small. . . . Go easy on him.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @10:46AM
Ahh, so it is. Looks like it somehow got out of order in the listing; shuffled down below a couple older Spam mods. My guess is the SQL query sorts by comment date instead of moderation date and the comment in question was almost too old to moderate anymore. Sneaky. I'll have to fix that.
Taken care of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:49PM
So was Maxwell [wikipedia.org]. 👿😊
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 30 2017, @10:45PM (3 children)
A Wikipedia-like entity could (dare I say, should?) preserve the full edit history of every article and make it available, along with the editors' identity and rationale as to each edit.
As far as "endangering knowledge" - today, as long as the 4G network is up and running, none of us has left the research section of the largest library on the planet. We have excellent AI to help us find material, the primary challenges are to know what exists, what is possible, and how to assess the reliability of the information you find. Libraries used to be monuments to knowledge, beyond symbols of academia they were functional assets, essential to guide intelligent decision making. That hasn't changed, but the access to knowledge and publication has been democratized and thrown open to the majority of people on the planet. It's going to engender plenty of sour grapes from the old guard, some justified - but overall, this access to publication and search of publications, more than anything is the big change of the past two decades.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:09AM (2 children)
That's first world city boy thinking, that is.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:57AM
First world? NUH-UHHH! Third rock from the sun!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:35AM
7 billion people, I'm not saying that everyone has a cell phone with 4G, but if you count the villages in Africa that have a terminal available within an hour's walk, and everybody else with that level of access or better, I'm pretty sure you're up over 3.5 billion people with access.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:56AM
I have to make a half-hearted objection, at least. Search engines, even poorly designed search engines, make it possible for you to find knowledge. You can use Google, or almost any other search engine to find facts, at the least, and knowledge if you care to dig.
Social media? Facebook is an entertainment industry newcomer. They keep you preoccupied while they pick your pockets. There's a sucker born every minute, and Facebook is there to ensure that Facebook gets it's cut.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driven on Monday October 30 2017, @04:05PM
"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."
There are many examples of people expressing their opinions on social media and then being fired for their views because they don't match the views of their employer or aren't considered "acceptable" opinions. Granted, I would judge many of them as in poor taste or coming from a place of ignorance, but shouldn't we seek to educate or at least further understand such an opinion rather than knee-jerking and firing, demonizing, ostracizing the person?
For example, some such comments are racist, but to really tackle racism you need to understand it. By silencing these people altogether we never hear _why_ they feel a certain way so we can't do anything to resolve it.
(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
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday October 30 2017, @04:13PM (6 children)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @05:07PM (5 children)
Are you saying the summary quotes too extensively? The reference to The Orville is lost on me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Monday October 30 2017, @05:19PM (4 children)
Quotes too extensively, yes!
Plus, the reference is to the article and episode referencing the same thing: likes and dislikes, and fake news driving stupid people.
(http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/the-orville/268556/the-orville-episode-7-review-majority-rule)
" My cat just puked and my dog licked it up. So cute!"
Like
Like
Like
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday October 30 2017, @06:21PM (3 children)
Check out the original submission! Much less block quoting.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday October 30 2017, @11:56PM (2 children)
Yet the original submission has the well-known aristarchus ass-hattery sharting!
Surprised they didn't just say "tl:dr, full of hate-sperm" and dump the whole article!
Grow UP, man. The only thing they COULD leave from the original submission WAS the block quoting.
Sigh.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:18AM
You're just never happy, are you? You wanted less block-quotery, and I gave it to you, and now there is not enough? There's just no pleasing some people!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @11:36AM
Hate sperm? He doesn't care much whether it hates, he just needs lots and lots of sperm, daily.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 30 2017, @04:24PM (5 children)
Humans, on average, try to be efficient about storing knowledge. As in, most people have basically this set of reactions to new information:
1. This contradicts my previously held beliefs. This must be nonsense! Whoever told me this information is a potential threat.
2. This reinforces my previously held beliefs. I'm going to accept it, and maybe add it to my store of arguments for why my beliefs are true (even if they aren't). Whoever told me this information is an ally.
3. This has no effect on my previously held beliefs, but makes me feel good. Aww, that's cute, but I'll promptly forget it. Whoever told me this information is nice and kind.
4. This has no effect on my previously held beliefs, but makes me feel bad. So I'm going to pretend I never heard it. Whoever told me this information is mean.
5. This has no effect on my previously held beliefs, but I'm not really interested. So I'm going to smile and nod, and promptly forget it. Whoever told me this information is an insufferable know-it-all.
6. This might help me get more stuff. I'm going to hang onto it and try it out to see if I can get more stuff by using it. Whoever told me this information is helpful.
7. This might help me get laid. I'm going to hang onto it and try it out to see if I can get laid more by using it. Whoever told me this information is helpful.
It's possible to resist these trends, but it's difficult.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @05:04PM (3 children)
This post is definitely a 4.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday October 30 2017, @05:21PM (2 children)
This post is definitely NOT a 7.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Funny) by frojack on Monday October 30 2017, @05:56PM (1 child)
Number 8: How can I get the 15 seconds of my life I wasting reading that back?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:07AM
i dunno, I am not going to get laid again if I use your number 8 in dialogue after getting number 7 to work.
(Score: 1) by ewk on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:11PM
actually NOT trying to resist the trend of getting laid. :-)
If we did, it would all end in about a century.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 30 2017, @05:52PM
-- some guy at HN
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)
Wired is stooping to self-parody again. I'll just note here that since the dawn of human civilization, a lot of people have been playing the materialism game. It's certainly not a "late-capitalism" thing. But a quote like that certainly checks off some of the "appearing" boxes.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 30 2017, @09:56PM
Lost in the depth of some Egyptian construction site, a memory of a philosophical comment from a visiting Pharaoh: "Focus on "being", because I rigged the game so you can't take part in the "having". Have you seen the latest plans my pyramid? It's 20% taller than grandpa's. I'm in the "having" game, and it makes me look good. Get working, peons, just because I'm a god doesn't mean it's gonna build itself."
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Monday October 30 2017, @07:32PM
Whatever anyone wants to say about human nature etc, I think that social media, especially the likes of Twitter, have really affected the replacement of any actual discussions with sound bites. Sure...similar stuff existed before...for example political campaign adds etc...but it's clearly gotten much much worse.
I had to laugh when I saw an ad for the new TV show "Wisdom of the Crowd" where they solve crimes with "crowd sourcing" or some such crap. My first though was: yea...the same crowd that believed #Pizzagate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @07:48PM (2 children)
The author exalts text over television. In 1911, a newspaper editor advised that an image is "worth a thousand words." It's possible to inform with pictures, sound or video, just as it's possible to entertain with text. The beating of Rodney King was captured on video, and it captured the public's attention in a way that a textual account would not have. In this era of the smart-phone, there are millions of amateur photographers, podcasters and videographers. Each one can potentially reach audiences of millions, globally, on an ordinary person's budget, with little to moderate censorship. The Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter have been credited to social media. There's an abundance of dreck, but that is nothing new: the penny dreadfuls and yellow journalism predate electronic media.
Before there was writing, there was culture and knowledge. People expressed themselves by speaking; they told stories. With electronic media, the spoken word can be recorded, so it need not be ephemeral.
The article quotes Amusing Ourselves to Death, claiming that the written word "enables us to [...] 'detect abuses of logic and common sense [...] to weigh ideas'" as though we can only think critically when we write and read. Are we to believe that all those parliaments that hold spoken debates, those courts that take spoken testimony, and those schools that have spoken instruction are doing it wrong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:03PM (1 child)
Yes, of course. But you miss the insidious side of the picture book: the pure immediacy of perception with these media means that what is being conveyed is not necessarily what is meant to be conveyed. The "media" of language, of abstract symbolic representation of concepts, allows for actual knowledge, a distance and objectivity, that can be lost with video or pictures. Text, or speech, is much better suited to knowledge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:57AM
...what is being conveyed is not necessarily what is meant to be conveyed.
That certainly happens with purely written communication, since words hold different meanings for different people.
The "media" of language, of abstract symbolic representation of concepts
Language was spoken before it was written.
allows for actual knowledge, a distance and objectivity, that can be lost with video or pictures.
People write what they choose, just as they film what they choose. The camera can, of course, be used to deceive, but it can also be used to show us the objective appearance (and sound) of people, things and events. We can lose our objectivity when reading, just as we can when we see something recorded by a camera. Writing can, and often does, convey emotion; writing can be intimate.
Text, or speech, is much better suited to knowledge.
Pictures and video can, and often do, include text and speech. The article, disregarding speech, expresses the view that the written word is a generally superior form of communication. I disagree. Some knowledge is best conveyed not through writing, but pictorially or by hearing. Much of the knowledge of biology, music, the visual arts, and cooking is of that kind. We aren't abstractions; we are physical beings in a tangible world. I see the value in writing, but I also see its limitations. The new media have different limitations, and they offer different value.
I think it's likely that with smart-phones, people are writing more than ever. I find touch-screen virtual keyboards execrable, yet many others accept them to the point of preferring text messaging to telephone calls. While such communication tends to be banal, it's not displacing something more polished. Someone who wishes to write is not compelled to use a touch-screen virtual keyboard. Bluetooth keyboards exist, and computers, typewriters, and pens are still readily available. Someone may even want to read. Social media platforms offer audiences that are potentially enormous. Remuneration for authors there may be little or nothing; perhaps that is a motivation for this article.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Brunzen on Monday October 30 2017, @08:33PM
What if social media is not "endangering knowledge", but the rise of it can be attributed to the "second wave" of people coming online. Like television and probably other forms of media before, the first to use the internet were educated people with an interest in science, "culture" (vs. "trash"), in the case of the internet -> porn and so on. That's why the internet (and television) at first seemed like an intellectual heaven, but as more people joined, the center of internet-gravity moved towards entertainment.