The artificiality of our lives is whats scary. We don’t hunt or run (some of us don’t) or spend time in nature like we used to.. we eat synthetic food products and take vitamins and medications ib pill form.

What long term affects will these things have? We don’t know.

Thats scary. But, hey, for now we’ve got it pretty good.

Memento Mori

And John, more than your post on the 6-hour scene, this article seems to fit perfectly with your web pilot during the strike (and to come, we hope). Instead of being a “viewer” in the sense that the strike happened TO you, you became a participant by finding a new way to share with the community. What the article is saying about new ways of using our brains is being seen online in Wikipedia and other places (YouTube, even YTMND.com) as each person discovers that the internet is a (mostly) open entity where everyone can see and be seen. That’s our cognitive power. It’s just like the paper clip thing that those kids did for the Holocaust. They set out a goal to see what 6 million was really like by collecting paper clips. They ended up getting them from all over the country. Sure, one person maybe only gives one little paper clip, but together they create a powerful storm of learning and experience. It sounds cheesy, but it happens, at least every once in a while.

Having come back from an extended stay at home (rural Manitoba – I live in Vancouver,) my most precious moments are time spent with family. Did I accomplish anything? No. If I walk around or stare blankly at a television thinking about a screenplay, am I accomplishing anything? (the Coens like to nap to solve script problems. The Coens) My point is that for every new human action, something must be lost. It’s not all going to be good. For every altruistic action, it takes one person (or corporation ) to destroy it. We kill, cheat and lie. We’re humans and can never escape that fact (the Congo attests to that fact.) We eat, sleep, etc. A few hundred thousand people on the internet is akin to Sean Penn taking a busload of Coachella fans to New Orleans. Good intentions, but it won’t amount to much. Even though this sounds negative, I actually agree in theory with Shirky in theory, but the vast majority of people are not wealthy and worry more about day-to-day survival. The practicality comes into play.

Another note. Property in Vancouver is ridiculous. Land in rural Manitoba is worth pennies. There may be an abundance of whatever sustains us, but humans are a fanciful breed. If it doesn’t suit their lifestyle/needs, they won’t share/consume/produce. Thanks to all for this interesting debate. I haven’t found anyone to humor my erratic philosophical debates since moving. Note to John: having just returned from a small town, manners in Vancouver are quite different. And not for the better. Maybe, that’s just here. Cheers. Barry

But overall I’m an optimist about the information age, as long we use it productively and not for Rule 34.

Didn’t Einstein say something about never memorizing phone numbers, since he could just look them up?

I never thought memorizing phone numbers was a good use of brainpower. And in terms of politeness, I think there’s a Golden Age myth happening there. We remember people being more polite when we were younger because we see our childhoods through the amber haze of nostalgia.

@Karni:

You might be joking, but the Unabomber’s manifesto is vastly different from what Shirky is saying, most notably in tone (dystopian vs. utopian). Yes, they’re both writing about changes in the socio-economic engine, but where Kaczynski sees an abyss of psychological frustration and limits to freedom, Shirky sees collective action and innovation.