The Interwebs makes it easier to look up the provenance of claims.
The old questions of which authorities are right would still remain. Classic case in point, a glut of global warmist research that may be compromised, inbred, and even just plain wrong, but without the ability to audit the science independently (and few people have independent laboratories) there remains a question of which authorities to trust.
I wish I could share his optimism.
I remember growing up when there were just three TV networks, no talk radio and Uncle Walter Cronkheit telling us each night that the way it was when he often was slanting things. Now without cable news, specifically Fox and the Internet things would be even worse. The MSM has become an unabashed propaganda tool of the White House in a way familiar to Hitler, Stalin and other despots.
For them, facts are irrelevant; it is their intentions that they think they should be judged on. And their intentions are always for the greater good, even if there are unintended consequences and failures.
Example: Paper or plastic. That changed the entire way commerce packaged purchases. A couple of decades later, plastic is now the great Satan. Re-usable bags are the preference. However, those re-usable bags tend to be sources of bacterial contamination. O woe is a good-intentioned liberal.
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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” Ayn Rand |  |
| I, for one, welcome our new Cybernetic Overlords /. | ||
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I just fact-checked this on the Internet and found out that Galileo actually got in trouble not for supporting Kepler's theory of a heliocentric solar system, but for publishing it as a fact when it was, at the time, only a theory, then ridiculing the entire scientific establishment, then basically calling the Pope a moron. His punishment was to be held in a luxury apartment with access to his equipment and encouraged to further his research. The comfy chair was not used on him.
The author is correct: instant access to information is a counter to false assertions.
Next up: the assertion that people in the age of Columbus believed in a flat earth. After that, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Committee.
All this access to information and Obama still got elected.
Still won’t make much difference to the LIV. All they care about is what Kim Kardaschian is doing this week.
Bookmark.
I can’t remember it verbatim, but there’s a great quote along the lines of “I speak up not to convince those I disagree with that they are wrong, but to show those I agree with that they are not alone.”
For the Internet I’d modify the last part to read “but to show those who also dissent that the are not alone.”
That, to me, is the greatest function of the Internet. We live in an age where the ruling power is actively working to stamp out any dissent, no matter from what quarter. Both through societal bullying (shaming and intimidation) and through the use of governmental power (IRS). The most important thing is not to permit a divide and conquor strategy that isolates and then silences us. And in that re Internet is our greatest weapon.
I can’t remember it verbatim, but there’s a great quote along the lines of “I speak up not to convince those I disagree with that they are wrong, but to show those I agree with that they are not alone.”
For the Internet I’d modify the last part to read “but to show those who also dissent that the are not alone.”
That, to me, is the greatest function of the Internet. We live in an age where the ruling power is actively working to stamp out any dissent, no matter from what quarter. Both through societal bullying (shaming and intimidation) and through the use of governmental power (IRS). The most important thing is not to permit a divide and conquor strategy that isolates and then silences us. And in that re Internet is our greatest weapon.
