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Re: Your contribution to AEC Memesis
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Francis Heylighen writes:
[serious cut]
>There is a
>kind of natural selection which makes that wrong, useless or low quality
>ideas sooner or later are forgotten, while the really worthwhile ideas
>(arithmetic, Shakespeare, the wheel, physics, Mozart, computing, etc.)
>survive.
how can you tell?
[serious cut]
>
>Of course, the system I propose is not magic, and won't solve all
>problems. It is likely to accelerate all evolutions, positive as well as
>negative. However, I am intrinsically optimistic about the direction of
>evolution, and I do believe that "pernicious memes" will lose out in the
>long run, even though they may be very succesful in the short term.
i d be happy to share your optimism; observing the net for several years,
though, i see a tendence towards popularization and superficial
adverticement also in posts and pages we would consider quality content;
it seems as if quality web-documents inherit the features of typical
web-pages, for instance their characteristics of announcements (you dont
get the details, attempting to get them keeps you in the system, which is a
main goal of the content-, or serviceprovider). the hyperlink paradigm,
basically a reasonable approach, certainly has side-effects, which we are
not fully aware of, yet. an obvious one is that links are increasingly used
for the routing of user-streams rather than as contextual links. this is
also due to a perpetuation of an established consumer/provider scheme
typical for market-oriented structures.
If science, research, art and education intend to use the net as a serious
working-environment, i dont see an alternative to implement (software-, or
hardware-based) fire-walls against business- and entertainment-usage of the
net in the long run (beeing aware that this is not a popular idea).
yet, this is not a pessimistic view; it suggests to detail the
evolution-metaphor, as used in this list:
several posts treat the evolution of the network and the communicative
(social) processes involved as a sort of obscure bio-myth, or as a
natur-law phenomenon allowing propositions on the basis of /analog to
biochemical concepts. i would think that especially the processes of
production and the range of methods and strategies of interaction and (of
course local, distributed) control hardly compare with concepts describing
biological evolution. that does not mean that we should not test the
metaphor and perhaps achieve some insights.
[serious cut]
>> It is an open
>>question whether we are ascending to a superbrain or decending to a new
>>dark ages of electronically engendered ignorance.
>I tend to favor the first option, as you already know. There never is a
>complete precedent for anything in evolution, yet evolution still manages
>to overcome practically all obstacles put on its way.
instead of addressing the question in terms of an externalized phenomenon i
would rather think of a process of active interaction (knowing of PPC i am
pretty sure youd agree). therefore a more interesting question i find
hidden in the conditional part of a statement of yours above :
>What I argue is rather that it could *develop* into a
>superbrain if a number of adjustments are made.
what adjustments can improve quality usage, especially in science, culture, edu?
cheers
julean
(currently decoding the noisy menome of the olympic spirit here in atlanta,
being aware that the observer is (part of) the system he observes)
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