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Internet and Inequality

Kevin Drum wrote an article last year in Mother Jones wherein he argued that

…the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don’t know how to use it, or don’t have the background to ask the right questions, you’ll end up with a head full of nonsense. (Drum, 2012)

On the flip side, Ryan Avent suggests that the Internet may be an equalizer of cognitive fortitude:

The more I rely on the same cloud brain that’s available to anyone else, the less the strengths or weaknesses of my meat brain may matter. (Avent, 2012)

As we make the Internet, to what extent does the Internet makes us? Are we creating the network in our own image… is the network transforming us into its likeness? If we are going to speculate on the cognitive-equity consequences of the Internet, the question of reciprocal causation is paramount.

To highlight nature of this reciprocal evolution, consider how much our lives have changed since 1993:

So has the Internet broadened the gap between the smart and the dumb? Has it increased our overall level of cognition by equalizing and democratizing access to information? As with most human technologies, the answer seems to be: depends on the user.

As the famous little epigram goes,

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people. (Mouat, 1953)

The technical contribution of the Internet is the capacity to make all types of discussions broader and more accessible. The Internet is a digital amplification of human nature. Its transformative influence on the cognitive landscape of society is inseparable from the agendas and cognition of those who leverage it.

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Reflecting and Broadcasting

Sometimes I wonder how our present digital landscape influences personal reflection. The ability to instantaneously broadcast a thought can quickly shift an internal dialogue from, "What does this situation really mean?" to "How am I going to fit this into a tweet?"

Does the act of contemplation and musing fundamentally change when the space between a guarded thought and a global announcement is so small?

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To Code is Human

Yesterday I learned how to do a media query in CSS. When I learn bits of code I am always taken aback by how the complexity of computer languages is only surpassed by its creativity. Coding, even if it appears like gibberish, is 100% human. We made this stuff up. And, like verbal language, digital script gives us the capacity to imagine ideas that were impossible to conceive before we wrote the platform to dream on.

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Cooperation

Thought experiment: let’s imagine that you are in charge of creating a new animal species.

Ground rules: you must play by the basic laws of life, remembering that about four-fifths of your own genetic makeup is the same as mice. (Church, et. al, 2009) In other words, you can be imaginative, but not too imaginative! Your experimental creature must be a plausible inhabitant on Earth, so it needs to follow the same processes that apply to all living things we know. Three-part DNA nucleotide codes must signify the same amino acid proteins — just as they do in you, me, goldfish, bacteria, and trees.

In order to survive, your creature must internally cooperate with itself: the genes in their genomes, the cells in their tissues — and all the innumerable subprocesses must work in conjunction with one another.

Here is another question: how will your new animal interact socially? How will it treat members of its own species? Will your species have a hierarchical society or exist in virtual isolation? Will it live in herds and packs, or solitarily, only interacting for the purpose of procreation? You must exercise a rigorous cost/benefit analysis here: in a collective herd, the ability of your species to notice (and thus escape) predators increases significantly, but living in a herd will also increase the competition for food within your species. Also, a highly cooperative clan of animals might have a lower breeding rate in order to reciprocally help nurture their young infants — but this comes at the expense of not otherwise producing more offspring. (Rubenstein & Kealey, 2012)

As in the human species, the consequence of cooperating at the collective level is often greater competition at the individual level. Whether in the microscopic, cellular domain or at the scale of behavioural interaction, cooperation and coopetition are usually causations of each other. Barely can one exist without necessitating and precipitating the other. When two animals fight over the right to mate, their vicious competition results in improving the strength of the herd. Conversely, when the employees of a business firm effectively cooperate with one another, they tend to out-perform their competition. A highly competitive sports team is marked by high levels of teamwork and cooperation. Cooperation and competition are inseparable: they make each other happen.

Whether it was the formation of your own genetic identity at conception, or the capacity of one business to rise above another company, or even the survival rate of your imaginative species, one remarkable observation bears noting: the better we tend to be at cooperating, the better we tend to be at competing, and vice versa.

As individuals, we seem disposed to emphasize (and moralize) one above the other. On the left, in praise of interdependency, we deem that cooperation is superior to competition. On the right, in praise of fairness, we deem that competition is superior to cooperation.

Today, how will you merge the coequally imperative goals of interdependent cooperation and fair competition?

(This post was originally published in the Caesura Letters.)

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The Circle of Biogeochemical Life

I tried singing Elton John’s Circle of Life (from The Lion King) and replacing the first line of the chorus with, ‘It’s the biogeochemical circle of life’. Clearly this adds far too many extra syllables. (Note to self: do not try as a karaoke trick.) This is unfortunate, really, because there is a clearly a rather strong empirical foundation underlying the basic premise of the song.

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Why Everything is Meaningful

“Frivolous chatter is meaningless,” says the man who fancies himself an enlightened intellectual. “I am concerned with greater issues in the world.”

“Why does your head wallow in things so alien to the situation of actual living?” comes the retort. “Why do you call ‘meaningful’ only that which is discussed in your ivory tower?”

Perhaps it is impossible to distinguish degrees of meaning by comparing them relative to one another. The production crew of a sitcom, the aerospace engineering team, the employees of a retail outlet, the screaming fans lining the red carpet, and the facility of a university, all share a common trait: they determine what is ‘meaningful’ based on a shared valueset and a way of seeing the world that reflects the views of others around them.

The question, “What is meaningful?” seems to be largely inseparable from, “Who do you value?”

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Building an Audience, Building a Message

Having a message to spread but lacking a means to share it is infuriating. Having a means to spread information but lacking a meaningful message is vexatious.

Do not build your audience in preparation of one day discovering something meaningful to say. Rather, build your insight and perspective in preparation for a future audience.

Your respect for the time and attention of those who will one day loan you their precious attention begins now.