The Big Switch: Rewiring The Footing From Edison To Google

Re-posted from 2 years ago
Reflections on:
Carr, N. (2008). The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google". W. W. Norton & Co.: New York.

Having finished this book, I'm hesitant to weblog at all (really quite disturbing how much the information nosotros pose on/in the Internet is beingness monitored in addition to used for creating to a greater extent than command in addition to to a greater extent than advanced marketing/advertising tools). Ah, well. I'm blogging this so that I holler back it (as, it was argued inwards the book, is the outcome of the World Wide Computer: a dumbing downwards of humanity, using computers to create our thinking in addition to remembering for us).

Most of the mass was devoted to describing in addition to highlighting the oft invisible changes that technology scientific discipline is having on our world. Very eye-opening.

• the emergence of Internet businesses has accelerated the economical sectionalization betwixt the richest in addition to the poorest, since fewer people are needed to run a successful Internet trouble organisation (like PlenyOfFish.com, run past times i man!) in addition to because human labor is beingness cheapened past times the mightiness of technology scientific discipline to perform tasks for us

There are assembly lines today, but they are without workers... they are managed past times computers inwards a drinking glass cage above, amongst highly skilled engineers inwards charge.

Computerization thus puts many American wage-earners inwards a double bind: it reduces the demand for their jobs fifty-fifty every bit it expands the render of workers create in addition to able to perform them.

• advances inwards technology scientific discipline remove led to "The Great Unbundling" - nosotros are able to pick in addition to pick out amongst advanced alternative tools what nosotros read/consume, etc., leading to a greater symbiosis betwixt media in addition to advertising (news stories are selected on the footing of their mightiness to larn individuals to click on advertisements, rather than their noun quality) in addition to also to greater polarization of beliefs

Not alone volition the Internet tend to split upward people amongst unlike views..., it volition also tend to magnify the differences.

• humans are becoming controlled past times the same forces they had hailed every bit liberators (i.e. i time the Internet was seen every bit a Utopian equalizer in addition to unifier, non to holler a tool to costless individuals)

In using a computer, a individual becomes component of the command mechanism. He turns into a constituent of what the Internet pioneer J.C.R. Linklider, inwards his seminal 1960 newspaper "Man-Computer Symbiosis," described every bit a organisation integrating human being in addition to machine into a single, programmable unit.

...the founding regulation of the Net is control, non liberty - command has existed from the beginning.... What's different, inwards comparison to the physical world, is that acts of command perish harder to abide by in addition to those wielding command to a greater extent than hard to discern.

• companies similar Google, which aim to create artificial intelligence (according to their creators!), are rattling or so producing systems that volition succeed inwards making humans (and the human hear especially) subservient to the machine

But the most of import indicate for me, in addition to the ground I read the book, had to create amongst the ways inwards which technology scientific discipline was changing the rattling ways nosotros intend in addition to act. Carr argues:

• humans are becoming inextricably incorporated into the Internet's computing web, dangerously so, mayhap to the indicate of becoming unable to business office without computers

What volition most surprise us is how dependent nosotros volition travel on what the Machine knows - virtually us in addition to virtually what nosotros desire to know. We already give away it easier to Google something a instant or 3rd fourth dimension rather than holler back it ourselves. The to a greater extent than nosotros instruct this megacomputer, the to a greater extent than it volition assume responsibleness for our knowing. It volition perish our memory. Then it volition perish our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't experience similar themselves - every bit if they'd had a lobotomy. (Kevin Kelly)

As machines perish to a greater extent than in addition to to a greater extent than intelligent... people volition allow machines brand to a greater extent than of their decisions for them, exactly because machine-made decisions volition convey ameliorate results than man-made ones. Eventually a phase may travel reached at which the decisions necessary to perish on the organisation running volition travel so complex that human beings volition travel incapable of making them intelligently. At that phase the machines volition travel inwards effective control. People won't travel able to exactly plough the machines off, because they volition travel so dependent on them that turning them off
would amount to suicide. (Theodore Kaczynski)

I run across inside us all... the replacement of complex inner density amongst a novel form of self - evolving nether the line per unit of measurement area of information overload in addition to the technology scientific discipline of the 'instantly available'.... As nosotros are emptied of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance..., nosotros look to travel turning into pancake people - spread broad in addition to sparse every bit nosotros connect amongst that vast network of information accessed past times the mere impact of a button. (Richard Foreman)

The most revolutionary number of the expansion of the Internet's power, scope, in addition to usefulness may non travel that computers volition start to intend similar us but that nosotros volition come upward to intend similar computers. Our consciousness volition sparse out, flatten, every bit our minds are trained, link past times link, to 'DO THIS amongst what yous give away HERE in addition to perish THERE amongst the result.' The artificial intelligence we're creating may plough out to travel our own.

• and our technology scientific discipline ends upward changing in addition to influencing our worldview

The printed page, the dominant information medium of the past times 500 years, molded our thinking through, to quote Neil Postman, 'it's emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, in addition to discipline.' The emphasis of the Internet, our novel universal medium, is altogether different. It stresses immediacy, simultaneity, contingency, subjectivity, disposability, in addition to higher upward all, speed. The Net provides no incentive to halt in addition to intend deeply virtually anything, to build inwards our retention that 'dense repository' of noesis that Foreman cherishes.... On the Internet, nosotros seemed impelled to glide across the slick surface of information every bit nosotros brand our rushed passage from link to link.

I intend the final quote is, inwards itself, an declaration for the demand of ethnography inwards a dry ground that increasingly demands quick (mostly quantitative) data. And this mass has strengthened my resolve to travel amongst designers to re-empower humanity, to sharpen rather than ho-hum our minds. It is clear that going against the forces that are carrying us toward these undesirable fates is non easy, but I intend at that spot is potential to role creative pattern to create systems that improve our abilities to travel human, non brand us ameliorate machines.