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Would the world be better without the Internet?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Versatile, Dec 15, 2012.

  1. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    I'm not so sure I understand that one.

    It used to be, if you weren't first, the competitor had a full day on you. It was in THE OTHER paper all day for everyone to see and comment on. Broadcast reports credited this report, and your publication had nothing for the entire day. You are called into the boss' office and asked,"How did we get beat on this?"

    And then, smarting from the embarrassment, your publication compounds it by 1) downplaying the breaking story somewhat the next day or 2) qualifying it ("sources say deal to acquire Joe All-Star no sure thing", etc.)

    Today, the competitor tweets a breaking story at 1:06 p.m., and you see it and tweet your own 140 characters at 1:07 p.m. Ten minutes later, it's all over the place. Who was first? Who knows? Who cares? What advantage was there to being the 1:06 guy?
     
  2. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Overall I think we're better with it, but it's not so clear cut. The distribution and access to information and ability to easily communicate with people the world over makes it an improvement to our civilization and essential to a democracy in this day and age.

    But there are a lot of costs.

    Someone earlier mentioned privacy, and right now there is next to none.

    Internet crimes are incredibly scary, especially with the ease that an identity can now be stollen and a life ruined. Hell, even the intensity of cyber bullying, at least the kids used to be able to escape that shit at home or by hiding in their room.

    It has made people lazy. To do research you used to have to actually get up and go to a library or, you know, talk to people, now everything is a click away. I think it is taken for granted by a generation that doesn't know anything different. But every generation that lived in the time before something came along can say that after the establishment of the new technolgy. And get off my lawn, damnit.

    Socially, while it gives you the ability to keep in touch with people all over the world, the face to face meeting is disappearing. Why go out and converse with the real world when you can do it from a keyboard and behind a monitor? Damn world is scary, there are actual people out there, they might discover me for who I really am.

    And the slow death of newspapers, but much of that is the fault of newspapers and their inability to figure out how to make it work -- giving the product away for free for much of the last 15 years sure didn't help.

    Also we are more and more living in an ADHD world where people are thinking less and less for themselves and prefer to regurgitate the last thing they heard as the God's honest truth without looking into it for themselves. While there have always been people like this, it is a problem that is exacerbated in this day and age, the Morgan Freeman rant was just the latest example. Yes, information is passed along easily, but how many people actually THINK about what they are taking in and forming their own educated opinion on that information? The world is full of sheep and it is much easier to shepard them online.

    Lastly, our overall relliance on the Internet and technology. If it all goes poof, we be fucked. All of our pertinent information is online and we have become conditioned to communicating through this one medium. I think we'd have a much more difficult time transitioning back off of it than we have transitioning to it. Can anyone at a paper now imagine going back to the pre-Internet days for your wire service or sending your story in from the road?

    So yes, it is better with it, but we better hope we do not lose it.
     
  3. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Yes, Beef, I can imagine it. But I'd have to find one of these ...

    [​IMG]

    Great post. It reminds me of the feeling I get as I see my town officials crazed to tear out any remaining railroad tracks.

    I wonder if someday we'll need them again.
     
  4. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    Why would we?
     
  5. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    In the case of railroads? Let's say the meltdown in the Middle East finally happens, or for some other reason the price of gas shoots above $5/gallon in the U.S. and stays there.

    Railroads become a much more affordable option to ship goods cross-country, instead of trucks.

    In the case of the Internet? As Beef noted, if terrorism or some other technology catastrophe knocked out the Internet — or even a few popular web sites (think Google, Facebook, Yahoo's email) — the U.S. economy would grind to a halt.
     
  6. joe king

    joe king Active Member

    I guess I didn't word this clearly. It's the immediacy. Back in the old days, yes, you had to stew for a whole day if you got beat, but you had all day to report the story -- gather facts and perspective, sort out the wrong from the right -- before deadline.

    Now, when something breaks, the message from the top is -- GET IT UP ON THE WEB! PUT IT ON OUR SITE! GET IT OUT THERE ON TWITTER! NOW!!!!! Maybe everything changes as you continue to report, but the initial stuff is out there. And if someone reports something and you get beat, there's even more of that. You have to respond, whether you're ready or not. GET SOMETHING UP THERE!
     
  7. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    I was at Infosys in Bangalore and Mysore a year ago. Didn't get to meet Murthy but did meet Shibulal.
    Fantastic experience and interesting company.

    What event were you at?
     
  8. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    This is something I've pondered on for some time. I firmly believe that we're heading for another Dark Ages-like period at some point in the future. Might be in 50 years, might be in 200 years. But what happens if something occurs to wipe out a few key server farms, like an earthquake, computer virus or human virus? Or certain companies go out of business, their websites shut down and their records are lost? Or, more pertinent to most folks here, newspaper/newsgathering sites go belly up? Or if there's a broader apocalypse that wipes out a large chunk of humanity? Or something as simple as the power grid getting nuked, and people can't access the internet anymore?
    There's so much knowledge out there now that maybe it's duplicated in so many places that it can never truly be lost. I have seen websites go away without warning, though, and seen firsthand how quickly things go to shit when we're cut off from it (Katrina, Sandy, etc.). I think if any of those events mentioned above were to happen, a lot of knowledge would be lost -- perhaps forever.
     
  9. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    Technology is not good or bad. A person chooses how to use it.
     
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