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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">In Maslow's defence, I think you would
prefer the net to go down in your house rather than the sewage
system. But it is amazing how fast we have adapted to a world
where information is accessible. It is also integrated in many
parts of our life: the food, shelter, social stuff are all
partially linked to it.<br>
<br>
On 06/12/2012 01:06, spike wrote:<br>
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Isn’t is astonishing that a mere 20 yrs ago, we didn’t really
even have the internet. What the heck did we do? Go around not
knowing stuff?</div>
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<br>
I think that is about right. <br>
<br>
I was interviewed by an art student a few days ago about the
interaction of humans and technology, and found myself saying "I'm
old enough to remember when computers were not common household
objects". Indeed, when I didn't know something at best I could go to
the library, but if it was too unusual (quite often the case) it was
unlikely to have it. Yes, the Stockholm city library did not have
many books on demonology - it annoyed me. So instead of assuming
"the information is out there" you had to make do with the
information that was accessible. It is a profound change of how we
think about things: rather than having to do super-smart deductions
from fragmentary data, we can re-use loads of previous data and
deductions.<br>
<br>
Same thing for communications. Today we have multiple media
available and can select the right one - email for semi-persistent,
longish and non-pushy communications, blogs for persistent messages,
twitter for non-persistent short messages, phones for pushy
non-persistent comms, SMS for pushy persistent short comms, and so
on. The distance between us is more measured in preferred media than
physical distance.<br>
<br>
It is easy to forget how rapidly we change our mental world. When I
grew up "foreign" implied something exotic and unreachable. Today it
means "in a different jurisdiction". Today I expect that if I have
an idea I can make the world know about it before leaving my chair -
a concept that is really shocking to the people shaped by the
broadcast media age (radio studios in the UK and Sweden are still
treated as strategic locations with special security requirements
since they have the awesome power of allowing someone to be heard
broadly). <br>
<br>
Cheers for a globalized, networked and non-not-knowing-stuff world!<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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