Nicholas Carr begins his essay The amorality of Web 2.o with the line : From the start, the World Wide Web has been a vessel of quasi-religious longing.
He ends with the closing arguments for why amoral
Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies - a machine, not a Machine - that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let's can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.
This was written a few years ago and has been provoking comments to this day ! That is probably the best endorsement for Carr's case - three years is a very long time on the internet.
I don't know if I'd go as far as The Church of Google but when you try to explain to your six year old that there was a time when there was no Google and answers to all questions known to man could not be found in a dozen key strokes or less, you get the feeling that you are trying to explain absolute darkness to someone who has never seen anything but light.
He ends with the closing arguments for why amoral
Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies - a machine, not a Machine - that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let's can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.
This was written a few years ago and has been provoking comments to this day ! That is probably the best endorsement for Carr's case - three years is a very long time on the internet.
I don't know if I'd go as far as The Church of Google but when you try to explain to your six year old that there was a time when there was no Google and answers to all questions known to man could not be found in a dozen key strokes or less, you get the feeling that you are trying to explain absolute darkness to someone who has never seen anything but light.
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