The Internet and the Dumbing Down of Culture

The great, partially realized, promise of the Internet has been the global instant access to knowledge by all.

The terrible, fully realized, reality of the Internet has been the instant voice to the mean-spirited dishonest ignorant.  As a result, debate and knowledge, in reality, has become dumber, more simplistic, and often subject to massive error.

This has been pretty obvious to everyone for quite a while, but it's become really obvious lately in watching a couple of debates.

The problem is that the Internet gives equal voice to people of harsh views, who can view them without fear of any sort of negative impact to themselves, and it also gives free rein to those who would simply choose to lie about a topic and their relationship to it.  It also gives a voice to those with free time and low knowledge.  So we see people who are true extremist who spend time shouting down any opposition, or we see people whose views are skewed and limited make representations based on claimed personal experience, or finally we seem somebody shout out opposition with a dimwitted view that would have formerly taken effort to express.

Now there's plenty of intelligent commentary on the net (and I dare say, on this moderated blog, the commentary is excellent, but then it is moderates so that the occasionally really hostile or stupid random post, which always come from somebody who has never posted before, doesn't see the light of day), but to take on the flood of bad commentary takes the dedicated effort of the knowledgeable, who often do not have the time for such efforts.  So, at the end of the day, people who claim to be observational experts on, let's say, the viewpoints of a Russian minority in Kiev might really be chronically unemployed men in their parents basement in Newark.

I'd note that what got me rolling in this particular day, however, is a comment I saw on the Atlantic's photo essay on World War One.  One commenter, which hitting his profile reveals is a frequent commenter, commented to the photo essay "All war is stupid."

Well, that's a stupid comment.

Do reduce warfare to that level of commentary would deserve a dunce hat and a three week silent sitting in the corner.  On the net, however it doesn't.

Well, that comment is stupid.