The Ecstatic Document
The relationship of ideas becomes more important than the ideas, just as information is more important than data. The expert is the one who sees (or can find out) how things relate, not the one who has the most facts.
Subtopic: General
The Ecstatic Document
Knowledge becomes not content but a talent, just as musical ability denotes what you can do, not what you contain.
Faded Genes
In 2088, our branch on the tree of life will come crashing down, ending a very modest (if critically acclaimed) run on planet earth. The culprit? Not global warming. Not atomic war. Not flesh-eating bacteria. Not even too much television. The culprit is the integrated circuit … By 2090, the computer will be twice as smart and twice as insightful as any human being. It will never lose a game of chess, never forget a face, never forget the lessons of history. By 2100, the gap will grow to the point at which homo sapiens, relatively speaking, might make a good pet. Then again, the computers of 2088 might not give us a second thought.
The Age of Paine: Thomas Paine Was One of the First Journalists to Use Media as a Weapon Against the Entrenched Power Structure. He Should be Resurrected as the Moral Father of the Internet. Jon Katz Explains Why
The political, economic, and social implications of an interconnected global medium are enormous, making plausible Paine’s belief in the “universal citizen.”
Super Searcher: Cybrarian Reva Basch is the Ultimate Intelligent Agent
At parties, I’ll scan the people: “not interesting, not interesting.” Which is awful – sort of looking over their shoulders for the next person who might add value. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to do … There’s a lack of depth and context and continuity in a lot of my face-to-face relationships. I think the whole quality of human interaction is changing.
Super Searcher: Cybrarian Reva Basch is the Ultimate Intelligent Agent
The hype about the Internet is driving the commercial online services to change prices and offer more user-friendly interfaces … With this, you’re getting down to the level of the average person.
Super Searcher: Cybrarian Reva Basch is the Ultimate Intelligent Agent
I’ve just got to believe that it’s in the nature of the Net and self-publishing to encourage a proliferation of ideas – may 10,000 intelligent agents bloom. There’s going to be a lot more points of view than in today’s media.
Super Searcher: Cybrarian Reva Basch is the Ultimate Intelligent Agent
Personifying the agent – I think we’re going to see a lot of that. It’s an interesting idea: Whose filter do you want to view the Net through?
Super Searcher: Cybrarian Reva Basch is the Ultimate Intelligent Agent
My real dream would be a Netwide, completely up-to-date, hierarchically arranged subject-indexing capability that is as sophisticated as what you find in the commercial databases. I’m not holding my breath for that.
Digital Refusnik: Sven Birkerts Believes that Technology is Leeching the Spiritual Out of Human Experience
Pretty soon, every household will be a centered unit that pulls all its elements together into one great communicating pipe organ. At the same time, there has to be a flattening of the human. It’s essential to the hive life, which challenges the old terms of what it means to form a life. As everything else in our society becomes streamlined, it becomes harder to resist the trend. Over the generations, people will have increasingly similar lives.