Pollution in the Information Age

[_MeDotOrg]

The United States has been a Nuclear Power since 1945. For seventy years we have built our security on the idea that we have the capability of retaliating with nuclear weapons.

Mutually Assured Destruction was recognized by both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. as the line which we would not cross. Yes, we did have fallout shelters and duck and cover drills, but there was a surreal quality about it all. We came close crossing the line in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but both sides listened to ‘the better angels of their nature’.

The post Communist/Democratic-Capitalist world is now a secular/internationalist McWorld versus a tribal Jihad. The concept of MAD is not relevant to an absolutist whose reward is in the afterlife. Say what you will about the Godless Communists, they had a healthy concern for their own life on earth.

Soviet Agents never piloted planes into the Pentagon. Very few Americans became self-radicalized Soviet Agents or blew up runners at the Boston Marathon. We are under attack from without and within. After the highly-demarcated battle lines of the Cold War, it is highly unsettling.

In addition to having a different opponent than the Cold War, we are fighting on a different battleground. It is asymmetrical, and it is being fought in the Information Age. Consider the National Security implications of the battle between the FBI and Apple.

In the Movie 12 Monkeys, Brad Pitt’s character explains the rules of the Insane Asylum to a new inmate wanting to make a telephone call:

A telephone call? That's communication with the outside world! Doctor's discretion. Hey, if all of these nuts could just make phone calls, it could spread. Insanity oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all those poor sane people, infecting them! Whackos everywhere! A plague of madness.

Plague of madness? Welcome to the Internet, where the smallest fear can be carefully nurtured into an elaborate paranoid fantasy.

I guess I’m old enough to still be amazed at the Information Age. If the light bulb is the symbol of the Industrial age, the smart phone would be the symbol of the Information Age: Not only instantaneous communication with virtually anyone who has a cell phone, but instant access to unimaginable stores of knowledge.

And cat videos. And pornography. And extremist websites to suit any paranoid fantasy.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age, we were so agog at its possibilities that we were blinded to some of its ill effects (like pollution).

At the beginning of the Information Age, we are somewhat blinded to pollution of a much more subtle nature: The ability to access any neural stimulation at any time. And a lot more people are choosing cat videos than Ted Talks.The internet is a world where you can fashion any worldview in splendid isolation from reality, but supported by a cadre of like-minded Netizens only too happy to take on the mantle of a persecuted minority (See 9/11 Truthers).

The internet is wonderful because it gives everyone a soapbox of equal height from which to preach.

The internet is terrifying because it gives everyone a soapbox of equal height from which to preach.

[_The CCC]

I don't know the solution. No one wants to go back to the days before the internet, but few understand that it is a two edged sword in the hands of fools, and the wicked.

[_Gunnar]

I don't know the solution. No one wants to go back to the days before the internet, but few understand that it is a two edged sword in the hands of fools, and the wicked.

Not to mention thieves who with a little bit of computer savvy can victimize many thousands or even millions of people at a time from the safety of their homes, without risking life and limb and without their victims knowledge until long after the damage has been done. This is one of the more worrisome aspects of the internet for me. The advent of quantum computers that can potentially break almost any conceivable encryption scheme could make it easy to breach almost any conceivable security measures.

[_Gunnar]

Unfortunately, almost anything that has a great potential for good has an equally great potential for evil.

[_The CCC]

True.

[_subgenius]

I guess I’m old enough to still be amazed at the Information Age. If the light bulb is the symbol of the Industrial age, the smart phone would be the symbol of the Information Age: Not only instantaneous communication with virtually anyone who has a cell phone, but instant access to unimaginable stores of knowledge.

I consider your, and pop culture's, use of "Information Age" to be somewhat misplaced and even somewhat exaggerated for "today's technology".
Now this may certainly well be the "Pollution Age" when one parses through what is being termed "information" - but just because we have faster access to every imbecile's wannabe profundity as meditated from the nearest toilet seat does not qualify as an "information age" - at least not to me.

Every age is the information age, perhaps this is the "Data Age" or the "waste mental time age".

But information?....hmm that sounds like marketing-speak

[Guest]

Every age is the information age, perhaps this is the "Data Age" or the "waste mental time age".
But information?....hmm that sounds like marketing-speak[/img]

You're right - every age is the information age. But the method of information transmission changes the nature of the information being transmitted and assimilated. To dismiss what is happening now as being the 'same-old, same-old' in human history is not to recognize the implications of the internet on human behavior.

Think of the invention of the printing press, and what that did for the democratization not only of religion, but the liberation of ideas in Europe. Gutenburg's printing press changed not only the information that was being transmitted, but the type and nature of the information that was transmitted.

You're right - in many ways the information age is (as I said) more about Cat Videos and Pornography as it is about access to a pool of knowledge. The internet can function as a stimulation resource, one that is adept at soliciting responses like paternalism, anger and sexual arousal.

I think the world is always becoming more terrible and more wonderful. Technology is a two-edged sword that mankind does not always wield with care. I'm not saying we should be the stopper back in the bottle. I'm just saying we ought to be aware of the fact that with most 'wonderful' technologies can be used in a spectrum ranging from wonderful to terrible, and as consumers of this billion-headed hydra, we should be very aware about what we put in our heads.

[_honorentheos]

The post Communist/Democratic-Capitalist world is now a secular/internationalist McWorld versus a tribal Jihad.

Sorry to derail slightly, but wow was that a flash back moment when I read this sentance. It's been a long while since I'd heard Jihad vs. McWorld. To the point I have to admit it's slipped out of my lexical paradigm. What's even crazier is how old the Atlantic article that first brought it to light among those I knew turns out to be when I went to revisit it.

Check out the date. Jihad vs. McWorld

Somewhere in a desk I have a CD-ROM with a talk by Benjamin Barber where he had updated these thoughts to the era of 9/11. I need to go look for that now.

[_honorentheos]

Every age is the information age, perhaps this is the "Data Age" or the "waste mental time age".
But information?....hmm that sounds like marketing-speak[/img]

You're right - every age is the information age. But the method of information transmission changes the nature of the information being transmitted and assimilated. To dismiss what is happening now as being the 'same-old, same-old' in human history is not to recognize the implications of the internet on human behavior.

Think of the invention of the printing press, and what that did for the democratization not only of religion, but the liberation of ideas in Europe. Gutenburg's printing press changed not only the information that was being transmitted, but the type and nature of the information that was transmitted.

You're right - in many ways the information age is (as I said) more about Cat Videos and Pornography as it is about access to a pool of knowledge. The internet can function as a stimulation resource, one that is adept at soliciting responses like paternalism, anger and sexual arousal.

I think the world is always becoming more terrible and more wonderful. Technology is a two-edged sword that mankind does not always wield with care. I'm not saying we should be the stopper back in the bottle. I'm just saying we ought to be aware of the fact that with most 'wonderful' technologies can be used in a spectrum ranging from wonderful to terrible, and as consumers of this billion-headed hydra, we should be very aware about what we put in our heads.

I think the best way of expressing it I've heard was to describe our era as the true democratization of information. And as such, it includes all of the pros and cons that this brings. It's easy to see why thinkers over the ages have viewed the unleashing of the untamed masses with dread, living close enough to borrow sugar from it's neighbor anarchy.

[_MeDotOrg]

The post Communist/Democratic-Capitalist world is now a secular/internationalist McWorld versus a tribal Jihad.

Sorry to derail slightly, but wow was that a flash back moment when I read this sentance. It's been a long while since I'd heard Jihad vs. McWorld. To the point I have to admit it's slipped out of my lexical paradigm. What's even crazier is how old the Atlantic article that first brought it to light among those I knew turns out to be when I went to revisit it.

Check out the date. Jihad vs. McWorld

Somewhere in a desk I have a CD-ROM with a talk by Benjamin Barber where he had updated these thoughts to the era of 9/11. I need to go look for that now.

I read Jihad vs. McWorld when it first came out and, while in many ways a flawed book, the basic concept is an extremely helpful paradigm for understanding the modern world and the forces of tribalism versus globalism. So well-spotted, sir.