SoylentNews

aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

We have know this for some time. The Grammar Nazis on SoylentNews have not been able to stem the tide of the mangling of the English language by actual Nazis. Why is it that ignorance and lack of education, and in general lower overall intelligence is a requirement to be in the White Soupremacy movement? But now, at last, we have some explanation:

Wikipedia, one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis.

There it is, Wikipedia is in existential crisis. I used to think, being a philosopher and all, that an "existential crisis" was a "crisis of an existentialist". I have since been corrected, or at least cued into current lingo, that now "existential" apparently has devolved to just "existence", so that an "existential crisis" is not mopping about complaining about the lack of meaning in the world, but a threat to your being, as in a just only being with no reason to be being? Boring. But, the point is, print is now boring, and even though the Wiki has pulled the cash to continue to exist, there are larger issues on the epistemological horizon, if you will.

That happy news masks a more concerning problem—a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors to the website. It is another troubling sign of a general trend around the world: The very idea of knowledge itself is in danger.

It is now the proper time to inform all Soylentils that this problem it taken from our friends at Wired [wired.com], a publication I have grown to hate. But in this particular case, there seems to be something to what they are trying to say!

The idea behind Wikipedia—like all encyclopedias before it—has been to collect the entirety of human knowledge. It’s a goal that extends back to the Islamic Golden Age, when numerous scholars—inspired by Muhammad's famous verdict of ‘Seek knowledge, even from China’—set themselves to collecting and documenting all existing information on a wide variety of topics, including translations from Greek, Persian, Syrian, and Indian into Arabic.

Yeah, right, even from the Chinese, the most technologically advanced people of the time! Thanks, Obama! But that is not the problem that is being brought up here.

The first step, of course, is television.

The dominance of television was not contained to our living rooms. It overturned all of those habits of mind, fundamentally changing our experience of the world, affecting the conduct of politics, religion, business, and culture. It reduced many aspects of modern life to entertainment, sensationalism, and commerce.

But this underlay a more fundamental shift, one from text to imagery. Video killed more than the radio mode.

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.’

That's enough, dangerously close to copyright violation or causing actual thought to break out amongst social media users. . . ha. Ha! I am going to give a "meh", but that is only because I recently "viewed" (if that is the correct word) the Emoji Movie. And the fact that that movie was made is more than sufficient evidence that Americans, at least, have lost the ability of abstract rational thought. Poor Americans.

So is it the case that modern Americans can no longer handle abstract concepts, ones like "the rule of law", the "right to free speech, and the press and the right to freedom of conscience"? So that it only matters how many likes you get on Facebook? No wonder The Mighty Buzzaraid is so pissed, and khallow is holed up in abandoned mine shaft in Idaho with tons of ammo and medical supplies and copies of "Atlas Shruggulated" . Yep, dumb as rocks, which somehow is fitting, for Idaho.

[as per usual, eds, last paragraph is designed for deletion. Have you way with it, or not. ]

Original Submission