1. Back in the days when I was doing a lot of speechifying at conferences and writing the occasional column for one or another professional journal, I would often talk about our “Gutenberg moment”. Somewhere around 1447, Gutenberg (and others) construct a printing press with reusable movable type. Not a singular invention
Great piece, Scott. There's a newish book you make me think of, J. Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, which has a lot of problems but a key idea I'm intrigued by -- that the age of Gutenberg was powerful because it froze and managed written thought in ways that facilitated the growth of very large but mentally coherent societies; and that the post-Gutenberg age loses that and thus gets us a world of people living in their own bubbles, devouring Cheetos and fake news indiscriminately. I'm still thinking about that.
Good points, and some optimism on the future is welcome. I think there's a generational difference; those of us who remember life before the Internet, those who remember life before smartphones, and the kids, who have no idea what an unplugged life is.
A problem is that the Internet, while manageable, is at best trying to drink from a firehose. So much bullshit, propaganda, sales pitches, and low-info content - and it's only multiplying. It is entirely possible to curate one's experience, but so many people don't...or can't tell real from "AI." With people's natural desire to seek like-minded individuals, we're each retreating into our own augmented reality...and consensus reality is weakening. The Internet is made of ideas, which is great for memetics, but bad for real-life implementation. Internet socio-politics need never be affected by the crass diminutions of "how do we actually implement this" and morality is reduced to what one consumes.
Great piece, Scott. There's a newish book you make me think of, J. Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, which has a lot of problems but a key idea I'm intrigued by -- that the age of Gutenberg was powerful because it froze and managed written thought in ways that facilitated the growth of very large but mentally coherent societies; and that the post-Gutenberg age loses that and thus gets us a world of people living in their own bubbles, devouring Cheetos and fake news indiscriminately. I'm still thinking about that.
Good points, and some optimism on the future is welcome. I think there's a generational difference; those of us who remember life before the Internet, those who remember life before smartphones, and the kids, who have no idea what an unplugged life is.
A problem is that the Internet, while manageable, is at best trying to drink from a firehose. So much bullshit, propaganda, sales pitches, and low-info content - and it's only multiplying. It is entirely possible to curate one's experience, but so many people don't...or can't tell real from "AI." With people's natural desire to seek like-minded individuals, we're each retreating into our own augmented reality...and consensus reality is weakening. The Internet is made of ideas, which is great for memetics, but bad for real-life implementation. Internet socio-politics need never be affected by the crass diminutions of "how do we actually implement this" and morality is reduced to what one consumes.