Internet, communication theory

[DrZoidberg]

We've had widespread use of Internet for 20+ years now. So what's happened? How has it changed our behavior? I'm not talking specifics. I'm interested in theory (which by necessity loses some nuance). Social media seems to be the big thing. Resulting in stuff like Flash mobs, killer klowns terror, Arab spring, joke candidates with actual power (Trump, Palin and Berlosconi) and the makers revolution.

I'm just trying to get a handle on the before and after. If I'm to take a poke at it... just guessing wildly here:

The world is getting weirder. It's getting weirder because the information flows aren't top - down any longer. Communication isn't from elites down. Communication as democratized. Now it goes in all directions. A lot of those now communicating, and getting attention aren't well educated. We get the emotional outburst as the main piece of news today. Which has zero brains, analysis or afterthought behind it. It's monumentally superficial. The entire communication of the world is now, basically, village gossip. But also democratic. Hard, if not impossible, to control by the elites.

So information got free. The problem is, all information got free. Not just the information we wanted. So it's more important to get attention than having anything to say.

BTW, I realize how this may come across as negative. It's not really. It's not a question of judging. It's a question of understanding. No matter how we may want to go back, we can't. So there's no point in being nostalgic. But there is a value in understanding how things have changed.

Am I right? Am I wrong? How am I wrong?

 

[ronburgundy]

Most of the information and ideas that people are constantly flooded with is inaccurate and unreasoned.

Another wrinkle is that social media floods people with opinions about everything, which then determines the users own opinion prior to them ever giving it any thought for themselves. Users don't even need to form a coherent sentence to express "their" view on a subject. They just retweet or like the overly simplistic 100 character opinion stated by someone else who was likely more concerned with being pithy than reasonable.

While in principle, social media could allow for exposure to far more differing views, in reality it is likely to create more and more conformity to whatever mind virus spread the quickest, usually for reasons having nothing to do with the validity of its ideas. In personal conversation, there is typically 1 or a couple people listening to your view. In social media, it is typically most people that you know and countless people that you do not. That makes social media posts more like creating a poster while running for class president than an informal but honest passing comment you make to a friend. So, not only is social media likely to be filled with "safe" conformist views, but the more people use social media, the more they will form private views that will be safe for them to post on social media. The fact that these platforms keep track of and make such a big deal out of # of "likes" and "retweets" makes this conformity pressure even worse.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Most of the information and ideas that people are constantly flooded with is inaccurate and unreasoned.

Another wrinkle is that social media floods people with opinions about everything, which then determines the users own opinion prior to them ever giving it any thought for themselves. Users don't even need to form a coherent sentence to express "their" view on a subject. They just retweet or like the overly simplistic 100 character opinion stated by someone else who was likely more concerned with being pithy than reasonable.

While in principle, social media could allow for exposure to far more differing views, in reality it is likely to create more and more conformity to whatever mind virus spread the quickest, usually for reasons having nothing to do with the validity of its ideas. In personal conversation, there is typically 1 or a couple people listening to your view. In social media, it is typically most people that you know and countless people that you do not. That makes social media posts more like creating a poster while running for class president than an informal but honest passing comment you make to a friend. So, not only is social media likely to be filled with "safe" conformist views, but the more people use social media, the more they will form private views that will be safe for them to post on social media. The fact that these platforms keep track of and make such a big deal out of # of "likes" and "retweets" makes this conformity pressure even worse.

So you think the Internet has made what people hear more inaccurate and unreasoned (compared to how it was before)?

 

[ronburgundy]

Most of the information and ideas that people are constantly flooded with is inaccurate and unreasoned.

Another wrinkle is that social media floods people with opinions about everything, which then determines the users own opinion prior to them ever giving it any thought for themselves. Users don't even need to form a coherent sentence to express "their" view on a subject. They just retweet or like the overly simplistic 100 character opinion stated by someone else who was likely more concerned with being pithy than reasonable.

While in principle, social media could allow for exposure to far more differing views, in reality it is likely to create more and more conformity to whatever mind virus spread the quickest, usually for reasons having nothing to do with the validity of its ideas. In personal conversation, there is typically 1 or a couple people listening to your view. In social media, it is typically most people that you know and countless people that you do not. That makes social media posts more like creating a poster while running for class president than an informal but honest passing comment you make to a friend. So, not only is social media likely to be filled with "safe" conformist views, but the more people use social media, the more they will form private views that will be safe for them to post on social media. The fact that these platforms keep track of and make such a big deal out of # of "likes" and "retweets" makes this conformity pressure even worse.

So you think the Internet has made what people hear more inaccurate and unreasoned (compared to how it was before)?

Yes, though it varies by topic. When the truth was something that old media in collaboration with government wanted to and had the capacity to keep in the dark and spread only misinformation, then obviously less centralized information dispersion would undermine that and increase access to accurate information. But its irrationally conspiratorial to think that ever was the case most of the time, outside of overtly repressive and non-democratic countries without even the pretense of free press (e.g., Soviet Union).

There is millions of times more information now. While that means the probability is greater that the most accurate information is potentially available, the overwhelming majority of the information is inaccurate and/or unreasoned, so the odds ratio of getting valid information / invalid information is lower now. For example, take a child that knows nothing about the theory of evolution, have one go to a library without internet and the other simply use google and learn what they can in two hours. Which kid will wind up with the higher ration of valid ideas / invalid ideas?

My money is on the kid at the library.

BTW, my speculation that social media breeds conformity has some empirical support from this PEW study. They examined the issue of Snowden releasing NSA information at a time when public opinion was almost evenly split on whether his release of classified information was good or bad for the public interest.
They found that people were far more likely to voice their opinion about it in person than on social media and that this was because people only say things on social media that are safe and that they think most of their online friends and followers will agree with. Not only that but they found that people who use social media very frequently (a few times or more per day) were less than half as likely to be willing to have a face to face discussion about it with their friends, unless they thought most of their online community would agree with them. IOW, people's fears about offending their online circle suppress their actual in persons discussions about topics.

In sum, social media is dominated by spineless conformity that actually spills over into suppressing honest in-person conversations.

 

[rousseau]

I'll take a bit of a different angle than one of 'misinformation' or lack thereof.

The internet is the original technology, but what's predominantly emerged out of that technology is 'social media'. Websites and applications that allow people to get in touch and communicate with each other faster and with more frequency.

On the one hand, as a bit of a tangent, this is a natural out-growth of humans as a social species. We crave positive social interaction more than anything else and social media's success is an indicator that what people want more than anything else is to keep in touch with the people they love.

In terms of communication theory, one of the major under-currents in human history is that of 'collective learning'. Social progress has accelerated in correlation with the rate that people have been able to exchange ideas and technologies. And so the fact that people are now able to communicate very efficiently marks the starting of the information age as a major turning point in human history. And at that I'd argue that it doesn't matter whether misinformation is spread more rapidly, but rather that entire cultures come to accept verified truths more quickly, and so their overall social evolution accelerates.

I heard a good example of this a few weeks back on BBC radio, where people in a community in Israel were being interviewed about joining a tech company, and how working and the internet were at odds with their Jewish faith. More and more people were starting to 'see the light' so to speak, and defecting from their conservative culture. At this point in our history religion seems to be the topic of the day. A lot of the world is still clinging on to their faith, but probably not for too much longer. I'd argue, then, once we get over that hump, we'll collectively turn toward other truths and gradually accept them.

 

[untermensche]

The internet has done nothing to change the awareness or intelligence of humans.

It is just the transmission of information. Or maybe misinformation.

As it has been since the invention of the printing press.

Not a big change in terms of what is being transmitted. Just a different way to do it.

Probably when people read newspapers they were better informed. Since most of what they read was vetted.

 

[rousseau]

The internet has done nothing to change the awareness or intelligence of humans.

It is just the transmission of information. Or maybe misinformation.

As it has been since the invention of the printing press.

Not a big change in terms of what is being transmitted. Just a different way to do it.

Probably when people read newspapers they were better informed. Since most of what they read was vetted.

So how do you explain the enlightenment and it's after effects?

 

[untermensche]

The internet has done nothing to change the awareness or intelligence of humans.

It is just the transmission of information. Or maybe misinformation.

As it has been since the invention of the printing press.

Not a big change in terms of what is being transmitted. Just a different way to do it.

Probably when people read newspapers they were better informed. Since most of what they read was vetted.

So how do you explain the enlightenment and it's after effects?

Did the Enlightenment actually change people?

Are the wolves howling around Trump any different from some Roman mob?

 

[rousseau]

So how do you explain the enlightenment and it's after effects?

Did the Enlightenment actually change people?

Are the wolves howling around Trump any different from some Roman mob?

Yes, the enlightenment overwhelmingly changed human experience and beliefs.

 

[untermensche]

Did the Enlightenment actually change people?

Are the wolves howling around Trump any different from some Roman mob?

Yes, the enlightenment overwhelmingly changed human experience and beliefs.

That's not what I asked.

I asked if it changed people.

Are people living today somehow different from people walking around in the times of Jesus?

The ability to write has not improved.

 

[rousseau]

Yes, the enlightenment overwhelmingly changed human experience and beliefs.

That's not what I asked.

I asked if it changed people.

Are people living today somehow different from people walking around in the times of Jesus?

The ability to write has not improved.

Genetically, probably not much, but that's not the point of the question in the original post, which is 'what is the affect of the internet on human society'.

Genetically we are the same, but our collective social understanding has been rapidly changing, and the rate itself has been accelerating since the invent of the printing press. This is strictly due to an increase in the rate that information is transmitted.

To argue otherwise is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of history and social evolution.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That's not what I asked.

I asked if it changed people.

Are people living today somehow different from people walking around in the times of Jesus?

The ability to write has not improved.

Genetically, probably not much, but that's not the point of the question in the original post, which is 'what is the affect of the internet on human society'.

Genetically we are the same, but our collective social understanding has been rapidly changing, and the rate itself has been accelerating since the invent of the printing press. This is strictly due to an increase in the rate that information is transmitted.

To argue otherwise is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of history and social evolution.

I think it has changed us. We are tool users as a species. We incorporate tools into our behaviour. If we pick up a hammer, neuro-imaging shows that the body now thinks that the hammer is part of the body. I think all tools work this way, no matter how abstract they are.

No, it doesn't change the emotions we feel. But those emotions get triggered by different things. We do have symbolic brains. Symbols can be switched around freely.

 

[Tassman]

The internet has done nothing to change the awareness or intelligence of humans.

No of course not. But it has changed dramatically what people believe.

It is just the transmission of information. Or maybe misinformation.

As it has been since the invention of the printing press.

Not a big change in terms of what is being transmitted. Just a different way to do it.

Probably when people read newspapers they were better informed. Since most of what they read was vetted.

Free access to the internet undermines the traditional source of one's informational reality, i.e. the networks of people, traditionally your family, friends and neighbours, who believe the same thing as you do. Traditional explanations and supernatural beliefs are hard to sustain once the social structures that support them are removed.

You go away to university and suddenly almost nobody believes what you do, or did. Your siblings move to different towns, so you won’t see them so often. And your laptop plugs you into any social network that takes your fancy and leaves you free to pursue any line of enquiry that takes your fancy.

So certainly, the internet makes us much better informed.

 

[untermensche]

That's not what I asked.

I asked if it changed people.

Are people living today somehow different from people walking around in the times of Jesus?

The ability to write has not improved.

Genetically, probably not much, but that's not the point of the question in the original post, which is 'what is the affect of the internet on human society'.

Genetically we are the same, but our collective social understanding has been rapidly changing, and the rate itself has been accelerating since the invent of the printing press. This is strictly due to an increase in the rate that information is transmitted.

To argue otherwise is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of history and social evolution.

I always love these dogmatic pronouncements.

"Disagree with my bare speculations and you have a fundamental misunderstanding of everything."

I love it. As absurd as a human can be.

And evidence they have not advanced at all for thousands of years.

 

[untermensche]

Genetically, probably not much, but that's not the point of the question in the original post, which is 'what is the affect of the internet on human society'.

Genetically we are the same, but our collective social understanding has been rapidly changing, and the rate itself has been accelerating since the invent of the printing press. This is strictly due to an increase in the rate that information is transmitted.

To argue otherwise is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of history and social evolution.

I think it has changed us. We are tool users as a species. We incorporate tools into our behaviour. If we pick up a hammer, neuro-imaging shows that the body now thinks that the hammer is part of the body. I think all tools work this way, no matter how abstract they are.

No, it doesn't change the emotions we feel. But those emotions get triggered by different things. We do have symbolic brains. Symbols can be switched around freely.

The body does not think anything.

Thinking is something that occurs, but what causes it is unknown. Most likely the brain in some completely unknown way.

But humans thousands of years ago had real working knowledge that people today do not have. They could survive much better on their own.

I would say humans have probably regressed.

They are less able to do practical things.

Just because the modern world is easier that does not mean it creates better or even different people.

What changed humans was moving from small isolated bands to living in large numbers.

After that not much has happened to people, even if the world around them has changed a lot.

 

[untermensche]

The internet has done nothing to change the awareness or intelligence of humans.

No of course not. But it has changed dramatically what people believe.

You mean they don't believe in things, like gods and angels, like they used to?

It is just the transmission of information. Or maybe misinformation.

As it has been since the invention of the printing press.

Not a big change in terms of what is being transmitted. Just a different way to do it.

Probably when people read newspapers they were better informed. Since most of what they read was vetted.

Free access to the internet undermines the traditional source of one's informational reality, i.e. the networks of people, traditionally your family, friends and neighbours, who believe the same thing as you do. Traditional explanations and supernatural beliefs are hard to sustain once the social structures that support them are removed.

You go away to university and suddenly almost nobody believes what you do, or did. Your siblings move to different towns, so you won’t see them so often. And your laptop plugs you into any social network that takes your fancy and leaves you free to pursue any line of enquiry that takes your fancy.

So certainly, the internet makes us much better informed.

Being exposed to the internet does not automatically make you informed. Not even close.

It is a much better way to also spread misinformation.

So the level of ignorance rises.

Until you reach a place where Trump is the Republican parties candidate.

And you know the misinformation has taken over.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think it has changed us. We are tool users as a species. We incorporate tools into our behaviour. If we pick up a hammer, neuro-imaging shows that the body now thinks that the hammer is part of the body. I think all tools work this way, no matter how abstract they are.

No, it doesn't change the emotions we feel. But those emotions get triggered by different things. We do have symbolic brains. Symbols can be switched around freely.

The body does not think anything.

Thinking is something that occurs, but what causes it is unknown. Most likely the brain in some completely unknown way.

But humans thousands of years ago had real working knowledge that people today do not have. They could survive much better on their own.

I would say humans have probably regressed.

They are less able to do practical things.

Just because the modern world is easier that does not mean it creates better or even different people.

What changed humans was moving from small isolated bands to living in large numbers.

After that not much has happened to people, even if the world around them has changed a lot.

Don't agree. The brain is highly dependent on the body for it's thinking. This is called "embodied thinking" in the scientific world. It's all the rage now.

We're so used to thinking in terms of the mind/body divide, that we take it for granted. But it's better to think of the whole body as a thinking organ. Chop off an arm and you will think differently.

This btw is the reason why physical exercise is so important. If you don't work out regularly you will become more stupid.

 

[untermensche]

The body does not think anything.

Thinking is something that occurs, but what causes it is unknown. Most likely the brain in some completely unknown way.

But humans thousands of years ago had real working knowledge that people today do not have. They could survive much better on their own.

I would say humans have probably regressed.

They are less able to do practical things.

Just because the modern world is easier that does not mean it creates better or even different people.

What changed humans was moving from small isolated bands to living in large numbers.

After that not much has happened to people, even if the world around them has changed a lot.

Don't agree. The brain is highly dependent on the body for it's thinking. This is called "embodied thinking" in the scientific world. It's all the rage now.

We're so used to thinking in terms of the mind/body divide, that we take it for granted. But it's better to think of the whole body as a thinking organ. Chop off an arm and you will think differently.

This btw is the reason why physical exercise is so important. If you don't work out regularly you will become more stupid.

You can call it "thinking" just as you can say a submarine is "swimming".

But thinking is when the mind directs thought to some end. It is an active process of the mind.

Random thoughts and sensations are not "thinking".

 

[DrZoidberg]

Don't agree. The brain is highly dependent on the body for it's thinking. This is called "embodied thinking" in the scientific world. It's all the rage now.

We're so used to thinking in terms of the mind/body divide, that we take it for granted. But it's better to think of the whole body as a thinking organ. Chop off an arm and you will think differently.

This btw is the reason why physical exercise is so important. If you don't work out regularly you will become more stupid.

You can call it "thinking" just as you can say a submarine is "swimming".

But thinking is when the mind directs thought to some end. It is an active process of the mind.

Random thoughts and sensations are not "thinking".

We don't actually know what directs thought. Probably there's no direction. I think you've confused consciousness with thinking. We have no reason to think that our consciousness is the bit that does the thinking.

 

[untermensche]

You can call it "thinking" just as you can say a submarine is "swimming".

But thinking is when the mind directs thought to some end. It is an active process of the mind.

Random thoughts and sensations are not "thinking".

We don't actually know what directs thought. Probably there's no direction. I think you've confused consciousness with thinking. We have no reason to think that our consciousness is the bit that does the thinking.

Any kind of planning is directing thoughts. It is forcing the mind to work on a specific task.

And the world around you is the culmination of directed, not random, thoughts.

You can't live in a clean dry home with running water and electricity by some random accident.