"A new invention
has emerged, a code for the collective conscious, which requires a new way of
thinking. The collective externalized mind is the mind we all share. The
Internet is the infinite oscillation of our collective conscious interacting
with itself. It's not about computers. It's not about what it means to be human
— in fact it challenges, renders trite, our cherished assumptions on that
score. It's about thinking." - J. Brockman
"We have embodied
our rationality within our machines and delegated to them many of our choices,
and in this process we have created a world that is beyond our own
understanding. Our century began on a note of uncertainty, as we worried how
our machines would handle the transition to the new millennium. Now we are
attending to a financial crisis caused by the banking system miscomputing
risks, and a debate on global warming in which experts argue not so much about
the data, but about what the computers predict from the data. We have linked
our destinies, not only among ourselves across the globe, but with our
technology. If the theme of the Enlightenment was independence, our own theme
is interdependence. We are now all connected, humans and machines. Welcome to
the dawn of the Entanglement." - W.D. Hillis
"Given what we have
today, the Internet could easily become Invisible High School,
with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social
obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College,
the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change, but to do
this will require more than technology. It will require that we adopt norms of
open sharing and participation, fit to a world where publishing has become the
new literacy." - C.Shirky
"The unplanned
worldwide unification that the Web is achieving (a science-fiction enthusiast
might discern the embryonic stirrings of a new life form) mirrors the evolution
of the nervous system in multicellular animals. A certain school of
psychologists might see it as mirroring the development of each individual's
personality, as a fusion among split and distributed beginnings in
infancy." - R. Dawkins
"It's not what
you know, it's what you can find out. The Internet has put at the forefront
resourcefulness and critical-thinking and relegated memorization of rote facts
to mental exercise or enjoyment. Because of the abundance of information and
this new emphasis on resourcefulness, the Internet creates a sense that
anything is knowable or findable — as long as you can construct the right
search, find the right tool, or connect to the right people. The Internet
empowers better decision-making and a more efficient use of time." - M.
Mayer
"The Web has also
enabled amazing dynamic visualizations, where an ideal presentation of information
is constructed — a table of comparisons or a data-enhanced map, for
example. These visualizations — be it news from around the world
displayed on a globe or a sortable table of airfares — can greatly
enhance our understanding of the world or our sense of opportunity. We can
understand in an instant what would have taken months to create just a few
short years ago. Yet, the Internet's lack of structure means that it is not
possible to construct these types of visualizations over any or all data. To achieve
true automated, general understanding and visualization, we will need much
better machine learning, entity extraction, and semantics capable of operating
at vast scale." - M. Mayer
… http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_1.html#
--Mikhail
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