Did you miss it? The Internet Enlightenment? During the
first enlightenment they wrote the encyclopedia,
constitution and read just about every book they could
get their hands on. This was the late seventeen
hundreds and books were rare enough to be cool. People
read, voraciously. They were smart.
The second enlightenment happened in the 1990's and
early oughts (00). People discovered the Internet. The
generation coming of age then made a stupendous
discovery; they had a love of information. Information
was consumed at a pace never before seen. These people
are smart and were motivated to be so. But now the
Internet has turned into television. Instead of
reading, everybody's watching vids.
We've all seen the effect TV has on the intelligence of
a population. It's effects may not be fully known for
decades, but it has some horrific results. The media
has torn apart social values and created a self
centered economy never before seen in the history of
human kind.
Now we have a short reprieve, the Internet generation.
But is it over? Has the Internet generation, the
generation motivated by intelligence, come and gone?
Recently I took advantage of the digital conversion to
get rid of my TV. I knew I had discovered better
viewing on the Internet anyway. I could set my own
programming and it was extremely engaging. What I
overlooked was that every night, at exactly the same
time, I switched my daily activities over to watching
my shows on the Internet (Hulu and You Tube). Nothing
had changed. I was watching TV again, except now it was
even better because I could select the programming I
wanted and I craved it even more than television.
I decided to do something radical. I needed to learn
lots of programming, which can consume every waking
minute, so I discontinued by DSL. I'm back on the
modem. If I want to watch something I have to wait for
it to download. Once again now my evenings are used for
learning new programming techniques.
My experience is just an example. I've noticed a lot of
brilliant people, with a lot of new and creative ideas,
who have emerged from the Internet generation. I hope
we can figure out a way to continue this second
enlightenment, that's not as radical as unplugging your
TV and DSL.
