Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman
The fact that everywhere you look people are hunched frowning over screens. That people are talking to others on cell phones while ignoring those around them. That people are whipping out devices to check their messages constantly.
Take it all in and ask yourself: what's going on here? Where is everyone? Why are so many human beings spending all their time on these machines? What is this? How did life come to be this way?
What does this all mean?
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This means that people are ever-increasingly able to communicate with the people that they
want to communicate with, no matter where they are located on the planet, rather than be restricted to the people that are around you as an accident of location. It means that people are able to keep up with the news of any area of the world or any field of interest that they wish-- no matter how obscure-- as long as there are a few other people somewhere in the world that share the interest and have internet access. It means that the world is both far smaller and larger than it ever has been before. It means greater freedom of association and access to information than anyone could have ever imagined a mere hundred years ago. It means millions of people able to live in a seemingly infinite world of information while you, Mr. Kaufman, cower in a closet with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears trying to block out the world around you.
I pity you, Mr. Kaufman-- you are deaf, blind, and dumb and don't even know it.
Quote:
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And we must ask ourselves, each one, in the name of human freedom, where we stand in relation to that.
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If we don't manage to wipe ourselves out with war, where we stand is on the precipice of a golden age of universally available knowledge the like of which history has never before seen. We stand on the shore of a vast sea of human culture, and art and science and will take little notice of the nipping claws of crabs like you scuttling around in the sand at our feet.