By Gordon Graham
The net: A Philosophical Inquiry develops some of the topics Gordon Graham provided in his hugely winning radio sequence, The Silicon Society. Exploring the tensions among the warnings of the Neo-Luddites and the intense optimism of the Technophiles, Graham deals the 1st concise and obtainable exploration of the problems which come up as we input extra into the realm of our on-line world. This unique and engaging examine takes us to the center of questions that none folks can find the money for to disregard: how does the web impact our thoughts of identification, ethical anarchy, censorship, neighborhood, democracy, digital fact and mind's eye? freed from jargon and whole of stimulating rules, this is often crucial interpreting for a person wishing to imagine in actual fact and informatively in regards to the complexities of our technological destiny.
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Extra resources for The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry
Example text
In the light of these criticisms it must be agreed that Marx’s account of history is painted with a very broad brush. Moreover, in common with the other major thinkers of his time, he construes the whole of the past in terms of European history and largely excludes the experience of the non-European world. Nevertheless, Marx’s account of the significance of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions seems to me to be true in the most general terms and, if it is, this explains what it means to call them transforming.
There is every reason to believe that the influence ordinary individuals living in the nineteenth century had over political events, national as well as international, was slight. Arguably, however, this was not a result of their knowing little about them. Had they known more, would they have been able to do more? If we answer this question in the negative, as there is good reason to do, by, parity of reasoning there is no substantial ground to believe that knowing more about events now has increased the influence of ordinary citizens on the course of contemporary affairs.
The World Wide Web is power to the people with a vengeance, we might say, since – unlike the rather passive medium of television – its interactive character presents ordinary citizens with the possibility of exercising an unprecedented influence on the social and political events that determine their circumstances and prospects. By dramatically extending their control over these public or communal aspects of their lives it gives them a greater degree of personal autonomy than ever before. Or so it can be and has been claimed.