In 2002, the Internet Age still in its infancy, the philosopher Bernard Williams (pictured) wrote:
Moreover, the Internet shows signs of creating for the first time what Marshall McLuhan prophesied as a consequence of television, a global village, something that has the disadvantages both of globalization and of a village. Certainly it does offer some reliable sources of information for those who want it and know what they are looking for, but equally it supports that mainstay of all villages, gossip. It constructs proliferating meeting places for the free and unstructured exchange of messages which bear a variety of claims, fancies, and suspicions, entertaining, superstitious, scandalous, or malign. The chances that many of these messages will be true are low, and the probability that the system itself will help anyone pick out the true ones is even lower. In this respect, post-modern technology may have returned dialectically to a transmuted version of the pre-modern world, and the chances of acquiring true beliefs by these means, except for those who already have knowledge to guide them, will be much like those in the Middle Ages. At the same time, the global nature of these conversations makes the situation worse than in a village, where at least you might encounter and perhaps be forced to listen to some people who had different opinions and obsessions. As critics concerned for the future of democratic discussion have pointed out, the Internet makes it easy for large numbers of previously isolated extremists to find each other and talk only among themselves.
Whew. Williams was dying of cancer when he wrote this, in his book Truth and Truthfulness, and so did not live to have his prescience confirmed.
However, counterpoint. Without the Internet, you couldn't sit at home and experience intense enjoyment from, for example:
The lyric in the line that seems overcrowded with syllables is, "Try to hide my sorrow from the people I meet." In some versions, this is amended to "Sing my song for the people I meet," which scans better, but I like the first way: more in line with what the song seems to be about—someone at the end of the line, given up, but then has caught a hope and is trying to edge back toward life.
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