We Can’t Handle What the Internet Has Done to Us

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Can’t Handle What the Internet Has Done to Us
Jules Evans, OneZero, 2019/12/24
The funny thing, for me, is that I'm actually comfortable with all this chaos. The whole internet thing doesn't bother me. Why not? Here's how Jules Evans characterizes the problem: "Social media has also totally transformed our politics, in a decade. It’s ripped apart our sense of trust in media and politicians.... The trick mirror turns everything into a performance, so political debate becomes wrestling.... We have reached a stage of collective consciousness, through globalization and the internet, and we can’t quite handle it."
So why am I OK with all this? Maybe it's because I grew up in a small town, maybe it's because I was writing from an early age, maybe it's because I never trusted media and politicians, having seen from the inside how they fabricate reality, maybe it's because I read a lot of science fiction and to me all this is normal. More...