Irrationality and Omniscience.

Social Networking's effect on Crowd Thought and Irrational views.

It seems so easy to fall into arguments with 'the arrogants' online. You can try it now. Many people you meet or have access to every day can, by misunderstanding or need for superiority, convert your nice words into provocation worthy of their combatitive hatred. You can see it online through messageboards, comments at the end of pictures, Youtube videos, or newspaper articles, in the more un-private areas of the web. The internet enables nothing new, and without it humans would still do exactly the same, it's just that through the internet things are revealed to us. People who were un-enlightened about mass verbal wars before (in the physical world), are suddenly now in a position to be privy to it, able to see all of human behaviour as a whole, even though it was this way long before the web, a just as massive but invisible occurrence. But an occurrence nonetheless.

The world without the internet is analogous to the world without newspapers, TV, or telephones. As you step back to the past in your lovely time-machine, and reverse the advancement of communication tech, you see people look more isolated in the past. They heard less, saw less, were ignorant of more, and were arguably unconcerned about what their neighbours were doing. Ignorance is bliss?

If there's one thing Mass Communication is taking to a climax, it's the ability to SEE and KNOW what EVERYONE is doing, where they are, what they think, what they look like, instantaneously. If the trend continues, we will be omniscient within our own human race. I don't think that will unite us as one mind though, just make us more concerned that we can hear a thousand voices, (like Superman?) instead of raising our own. An individual's words will be more meaningless. The intelligent people will become quieter, and more intent to be offline and disconnected.

We never thought about our ability to regulate our own mass global connection, and as a result we see a million people's private lives and what they contain/how they are different from ours, instead of remembering we have our own life to live. It's distracting.

From trends to advertising to status anxiety (envying the power and wealth of others), the majority of people are plugging their brains into the mass surge, a stormy sea of thoughts. If only it could be displayed in such a pictorial form, then maybe the web-developers would better understand how to channel the flow.


-Des