The Information Age

[Shattered Rift]

Since Silver's been spamming my Inbox to get an active discussion going this is such a fascinating subject, I thought it might be worth some speculation on.

Recently in my town the library recently passed something-or-other to update various things, as well as add Wi-Fi to the libraries in this area. Wi-Fi's becoming more and more of a trend than a bonus for business, and from what I'm aware some of the larger cities in Japan are like a giant wireless signal. In less than twenty years, the Internet has gone from a nice research tool to a vital part of society. Computers have done the same.

To the point of this thread, I'm curious what long-term effects and consequences everyone sees this as having, as well as whether they think the immersion into technology is a good thing or not.


One of the thoughts that occurred to me, continuing with the library example, is that books are gaining less and less attention, and simply having them in a data format might eventually become the preferred medium. Taking an example from Beast Wars, there was a random scene where a character was reading a "book" on something that looked like a Palm Pilot. I think that could end up being a fascinating way to end up "buying" books a few years from now, simply going to the store, going to a terminal, downloading a booklist (and sorting through it), then buying and downloading a book onto a device, never having to worry about the book being in stock, or having to have the large space a bookstore normally occupies.

[lotusblossom02]

One thing which comes to my mind is Fahrenheit 451. Sure we've moved beyond just TV's to computers and internet and everything else, but the principle could still be the same.

It closes growing children's minds off to some things while opening their mind's to others. The ability for children from say a rural back country town in the U.S. (or any country for that matter) to possibly see and interact over giant TV's with children from Sweden or Japan or India (or wherever) takes the old pen pals to a new level.
While that is nice I still can't help but think...is this development of a society a good thing as we're leaving behind old and vital skills from the past? Or will this come back to bite us in the butt one day way down the road when reading actual typed (with ink and paper) works of art is a thing of the past?
I have mixed feelings on it...being an internet junky myself but I always find time to sit down a read a great book.

[Heiper]

I think all that "information age" stuff is good: knowledge is power, and free knowledge is free power. But I don't see digital book replacing paper books anytime soon; I haven't found yet a good way to read a book other than paper itself.
I've tried Palm's, PDA's and even my Nintendo DS, but I can't be reading on those for a long time without my eyes hurting. I wouldn't buy a book in digital format, at least with the current screens.

[Spaz]

I agree with Heiper. Using google or wikipedia to look up something in 1 minute definitely beats a trip to the library, if it's even open at the time that you're working. Books are definitely more readable than electronic information, but having information in a digital format does have some advantages. Ever been looking through a textbook or other book and wishing you could ctrl+f? I think that physical books are here to stay and at the same time, digital information will increase its presence, and that both of those are Good Things.

[obiwanpi]

What I'd say on the subject is:

IMFORMATIONAL texts will move to the digital medium, as you don't sit down and read that stuff from cover to cover, you read the section you want. Information basically already HAS moved to the digital medium, though there's a large contingent of teachers who seem to think that we won't ever be able to replace referace books with web sites...

However, it is much less relaxing, for whatever reason, to read in the digital medium, so recreational books will mantain thier paper form for quite a while.

In general, I think that technology is good to develop, however, ther are a couple things which sorta bug me about some of the ways it's being developed/ used:
-Increasing the ease/ portability of music and other auditory medium. Sorry to people who like this stuff, but as a major intrivert who loves to think, and has trouble thinking with noise, I don't like that fact that I'm stuck hearing music in more and more places.

-Mixing of technology with pop culture/ adversiting (I consider the too entities at least strongly linked, if not the same). Technology has allowed corperations to sell the image of what someone should be like that they would find most profitable on a much larger and more efficient scale than ever before, which also results in scoital pressures to follow these images. While I tend to ignore such pressures, it annoys me that they exist, both because they are basically the image which is profitable to the highest bidder, and often are unhealthy (physically or emotionally) for people to follow. Technology has also allowed the physical side of the the image being sold to be edited into something totally unrealistic.

-Plaugerism/ copyright violation. (It's much easier to do online.) I'm all for freedom of information. I don't think people should have to pay to know the news, just like I don't think they should have to pay for thier education. But when things which people worked hard to compose (books, songs, artwork articles) become available free online, it hurts the person who invested the time in the work finantially. I could see this getting to the point where innovation in these fields is discouraged by all the money lost due to people getting the work free online.

-Finally, I'm desturbed by the potential for misinformation. Someone practically annonymous to the public can get a message based on false facts out and into lots of people's head before anyone can respond to them. While I am suspect of any imformation I see which I do not know the source of, I also ignore societal pressures, I am not as effected in my opinions/ actions by other peoples opinions/ actions as most are, and all the labbels which get thrown around and excepted blindly in today's world scare me.

[Giegue]

Free information is useless if the majority of the public fails to master logic.

[+Josh]

Rainer Wrote:Free information is useless if the majority of the public fails to master logic.

QFT.

[Shattered Rift]

I've never actually tried to read a book digitally, but given that I play video games, stare at a computer screen for hours on end, etc, the only thing that seems like it would bother me would be the small size of a screen. Possibly contrast would be another issue, since the light is being projected rather than reflected. (Which might be the problem right there.)


I'm looking forward to the day when schools operate entirely electronically. Typing is already an essential trait of the job-market, and having to hand-write essays feels barbaric (then again, I never had good hand-writing). We always do better looking up information online (or on a computer) rather than flipping through a textbook. Assuming the interface was one that was controlled school-side, it would also eliminate a lot of the cheating on tests, and the like (then again, some of the old methods will never die).


I'll group the music and "creative license" discussion: it's unavoidable with the direction we're going. Now that music is readily rip-offable, there's no real turning back and finding a way to force the consumer to purchase CDs. The problem will possibly mirror Neo: the job's still a way to make money, and even though it's not the money it once was it's still there to be made.


Misinformation is a flaw of the public, either because of apathy or sheep gullibility. It was always possible to occur before with both the radio and TV (the only examples coming to mind were political: statements made by prior Presidents and the like that bent the truth significantly, though I don't remember the specific examples). Though we've now confirmed that any idiot, not just one in power, can do it. I'm not really sure there's a good way to prevent this.

[Metalwarrior]

The screens of the computers and such can damage our eyes at the long term, but the book doesn't. Besides, you can find complex info pretty detailed in the books, rather the internet.

The internet can be pretty manipulable, so it is easy to control the people, since books are not so visited, it is easier to find things that the t.v. and radio have censored.

The books will be part of the human story, or at least, that's what I belive.

[graphitesmoothie]

Not adding much, but addressing the "ow, my eyes burn" issue:

If webmasters are smart enough, they'd make their websites with dark backgrounds and light text, as it's less bright, therefore less damaging to your eyes. (I totally stole this from the best page in the universe, btw )

[weee5067]

My eyes have never hurt from using a computer screen that I'm aware of. Then again, I seem to be incapable of getting headaches, and only very rarely do my eyes ever hurt, so I don't think I'm the best judge of that. Not sure if computer screens can cause lasting damage, but apparently, places with a higher literacy rate also have a higher percentage of the population needing glasses. There are certainly possible reasons for this that don't involve reading being damaging for your eyes, but there's still the potential...I don't think you can say that books aren't bad for our eyes and computers are.

Overall, technology seems like mostly a good thing, except for the high energy demand of a lot of devices (of course, as technology progresses, energy consumption of more advanced gagets seems to be going down...but I don't have any facts to back any of this up). We've gotten to the point where a lot of problems seem like they could be solved pretty soon - better medicine, better artificial body parts, genetically engineered food that has higher nutritional value and can be grown faster and in greater quantities...the problem is that some people are so opposed to certain advancements due to sheer ignorance. Genetically engineered food is the biggest example of that that I can think of - we've been messing with genetic makeups for ages through selective breeding, but once you speed up the process, it's something entirely different? Come on...