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The Internet of Us

Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data
Nov 13, 2017tjdickey rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Lynch is a professional philosopher, and a good one; "The Internet of Us" takes as its task to examine "the foundations of ... our digital life." His approach, well supported in ethics and neuroscience, is that the Internet - especially social media and the growing pervasiveness of cell phones and other connected objects (your car, your watch, your refrigerator, your thermostat) is changing the very way we as human beings know things. We replacing deeper levels of understanding with pervasive Google-knowing, and an un-examined hive mind. The author does not say that the connected world is bad in itself, just as the automobile is not bad in itself. The automobile has made us preference itself over other ways of getting places - we use cars exclusively and unthinkingly, over public transportation and walking which are other ways of getting places with their own positive effects on us and on society. Similarly, a technologically connected world makes us preference quick and less-critical reception of snippet knowledge from the crowd (or worse, from the crowd of people who think like us and just re-tweet the same things), over our own rational acceptance of reasons for belief and knowledge. He reiterates the good that can come from our connected lives, and that the UN has declared blocking access to the Internet a violation of human rights. However, he desperately wishes we all spent more time in rational and thoughtful discourse over the net. Ironically, the very people whose digital attention spans are most affected by fragmentation and living on social media are the least likely to pay attention and read his arguments...