:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Monday, November 03, 2003 ::

Hubert Dreyfus – ON THE INTERNET: A summery I found of "Hubert Dreyfus – ON THE INTERNET" And then of coarse one or two of my own sense... (terrible pun... doesn't even read on the aaron scale)

"Learning used to be a distinctly human process. Now learning is a transhuman process people share with increasingly powerful artificial networks and brains."

"With knowledge doubling every year or so, “expertise” now has a shelf life measured in days; everyone must be both learner and teacher; and the sheer challenge of learning can be managed only through a globe-girdling network that links all minds and all knowledge."

"The anonymity and safety of virtual commitments on-line, leads to loss of meaning."

You know modern technology is really pushing peoples limits of whats real. With the internet anyone can say something, and anyone else if they find that something to be believeable and/or somehow authoritative will accept it and pass it along. Truth gets passed over... or at least the question of truth. Now not that i'm against truth, in fact i'm all for it; Go Science!; but in a way not knowing objective truth is how we live our lives. Shouldn't it also be how we understand ourselves to live them as well?

"All the commitments on the Net are the Virtual commitments, as Hubert Dreyfus further explained:“Kierkegaard would surely argue that, while the Internet allows unconditional commitments, it does not support them. Far from
encouraging them, it tends to turn all of life into a risk free game. "

And again comes in that need for survival... what do you get from that need, that drive? An overwhelming push for stability and reassurance. Indulgance leans towards the meaningless... where as patient, ordered, diciplined work creates a meaning, a sense of order--even if merely a patch-work quilt kind of order.

"So far as games work by capturing our imaginations, they will fail to give us serious commitments. We read dense texts or practice a difficult piece of music day after day because they matter greatly to us. But we are unlikely to stay with either for long when we have only an imaginary ultimate commitment. Imagined commitments hold when our imaginations are captivated by the simulations before our ears and eyes. And that is what computer games and the Net offer us. The temptation is to live in a world of stimulating images and simulated commitment and thus to lead a simulated life."

"In the aesthetic sphere, the aesthete avoids commitments and lives in the categories of the interesting and the boring and wants to see as many interesting sights (sites) as possible." The world I live in!! Ahh.. as I look into the abyss it looks right back!

:: Jim Nichols 11/03/2003 09:19:00 AM [+] ::
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