It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.
It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.
I mean, It has partially worked, information is more accessible than it would be if you had to go find a library and search through a ton of book that may or may not even have what youre looking for, or had to try to find someone who knew something or had some skill that you wanted to learn. And it has brought together people across distance, consider the number of online communities and subcultures whos members live in far-removed places, some of whom might be in fairly small towns or rural areas that just wouldnt have enough people of a particular interest to even have a branch of that community there. And it does also reduce the monopoly on dissemination of news and information that traditional media outlets and governments used to share. Its just, the predictions didnt also take into account that it would increase the ease of spreading false information either, or that not all debates have an answer that is obvious to everyone if only they are presented certain info, or that people wont want to talk to everyone and will instead choose to talk to those they find commonality with even given the means to talk to people they dont.
Turns out, having the facts is only a partial solution. If people don’t want to take them as facts, you’re still going to have stupid debates about anything and everything all of the time.
We’ve fixed the information availability problem, but human psychology hasn’t changed one bit.
If everybody was fully exposed to the internet, a general consensus view on a topic would be eventually settled. The problem is that a lot of us live in walled gardens and the networks that be work to keep us in them