Even if not literally "the most consciously aware of all animals", at least one with the most ego...
*__-

Are we input devices for this new planetary cyberMind?
All is evolving so quickly!

The link did not work for me. So, apologies if I ramble a bit.

There is really a case for the relation between Internet and the evolution of mankind, even if it is not in the traditional Darwinist sense.

I actually see this process both on the microscopic(individual) level and on the macroscopic(systemwide) level.

On the personal level I can take myself as an example. The net accelerates my ability to connect dots all over the place. lessons learned in one place are readily applicable in another. For me there is a direct connection between this very forum and some others I am also on. It has an almost autokatalist feel.
In addition there is also an abundance of static sources of information such as Google and Wiki(not just pedia).
The information itself is no longer the bottleneck, but the processing abilities of the mind.

On the macroscopic level I perceive the growth of a system of gradually increasing complexity. Such a system will sooner or later begin to exhibit emerging characteristics. We just can't tell what those will be by merely looking at the constituent elements.

*Fixed the link.

An interesting perspective. I suppose my mind is working in a different way than it ever could had the internet not been around. I can wonder something, google it, know it, continue the thought process, reach a block, google it, know it, move on. Yahoo answers has been a huge asset to the net. The internet is almost becoming a large all-knowing brain which a mind can connect to. The beautiful thing is its all man made. All the information, what it has become is all there because millions upon millions have spent their time adding to it.

I wonder if the internet is actually the birth of artificial intelligence. Or the birth of another consciousness. I suppose it would be the informational section of an artifical intelligent brain. Its quite primitive now, but as with everything, it will evolve, it has to. Eventually, I'd imagine, we will give it a body, a face, a voice. Why not, it sure would be handy to have a butler who knows everything

The net is quite astounding.

You should try programming.

Because the computer is totally logical it FORCES you to become totally logical as well. It actually trains dyslexia out of you, and shows you how easy it is to think something is correct that is not.

But what of people that are not connected? Those that have a fear of computers for example? They lose pace with society and get left behind.

Many get information overload, and just stick to simple things on the net. Or just give up on it altogether.

I think its going to abstract two types of people out of the human race:
Homo philosophicus computeris, and homo ignoramus.

Personally I think it is amazing. I have relative in Canada, Africa, and Australia and I have never been in contact with them as much as I have since I got on the net. I have cyber friends that I have been in contact with on and off for more than five years that I haven't even met. I'm in nightly contact with family members who live about an hours drive from each other. As for the reading I have done on the net, books I have bought because of the net, movies I have seen, Personal and professional information and advice I have received from others. The leisure time, the fun and games I have shared with the kids and grandkids. There is no end to it. If this is evolution, I want more!

Yea it is; for those who use it a lot I don't think there's any doubt of that.

But I think a strong caution is in order - to all of us who spend a lot of time glued to our chairs. While there may be mental, knowledge-based and cognitive benefits to using the internet, it distances us from each other (no more physicality needed to interacting), encourages a sedentary lifestyle (sit on that butt... yep, keep sitting), bombards us with more information than we should try and bite off at once, "... and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses." as the linked article referenced. Yea I'm guilty of this too (if 'guilty' there be!).

The article also spoke of technocrats being at the 'top of the social order'. While I think this is already true - to some greater or lesser extent - it bothers me intensely. I believe one of the biggest problems we have in this world is a growing impersonality with each other. We no longer need to visit, or talk face to face, to interact. The more distanced from each other we become, the more 'impersonalized', conceptualized and dis compassionate we become. I believe that destructive isolation isn't cured by chatting online, messaging on a web forum or online gaming.

That being said, I'd like to re-state that I'm not anti-technology one bit. But I think the more we rely on depersonalized means for learning, the more we break down the human bonds we all need.

<jumps off soapbox and ducks for cover>

Thanks

the funny part is its just going to get worse. i remember my parents would ask how the heck I could sit in a dark room all by myself for so many hours in front of that computer. i had to explain to them I was actually socializing and all my other friends were online too.

I'm not sure how I'm going to feel when my kids are sitting in a char with a helmet over their head, not typing, not using a mouse, just sitting seemingly lifeless while their mind enters this technical world. I'm guessing they will explain to me that they are actually socializing and all their other friends are online too..

Is it evolving or de-evolving?

The average intelligence is getting lower by the day. Knowledge is no longer something in our minds but something we can access when we need it and disgrad when it is no longer necessary. Why should one learn if knowledge is at your figertips all the time? Our moral senses seem to be degrading as well. The information that we are intaking is no longer limited to experience in life but the experience of billions of others. Some of these experiences are foul and disheartening. Rotten.com is a prime example. Nature follows a certain course and does no stagnate and yet, we seem to have some issue with believing we have a right to change the course of nature.

Each day that I go out about town and sit and listen to people, the more I realize that the human race seems to be getting worse. Men and women have been replaced by boys and girls of exceptional age. Moral aptitude has declined greatly. Intelligence has been replaced by the ability to type.

Ask someone on the streets why they wake up every day and they will have to pause to think about it. We are no longer living, breathing, thinking creatures of innovation. We are slowly but surely becoming nothing more than an I/O device consuming everything we can with no concern of tomorrow because we don't even know why we are here today.

In my opinion, the internet is one of the worst things to happen to man kind and one of the best. It is hard to weed through the scraps of wasted flesh in order to find someone decent and worth while. The internet gives the intelligent people a way to share ideas and the not so intelligent a way to spread their lack there of. Unfortunately, there are far more unintelligent people than intelligent.

I think internet is a scary thing, not a bad one, that is, its causing so many changes and so fast that it scaries people. People are afraid of changes, and try to resist then, and go nostalgic.

The Human brain can hold limited information, rather than having all knowledge in the world it seens wise to put it somewhere where we have easy acess and keep just the necessary to mantain contact with this stored knowledge.

As far as I can tell moral is not droping, its just diversifying now that we stopped shotting people that differ from the majority What I mean is kind of: Today's liberalism is not the cause for the lack of morality in the world, but rather the autoritarism from yesterday was the cause for its non-existence.

And I think that with the pace technology is advancing we will be editing ourselves soon, so there is not enough time to discuss what bad stuff internet will cause to the species

May I ask where you are located. I would say that any discussion of this type should be put in perspective of location seeing as it directly effects the experience of such.

Brazil. Tough the location wont have real effect unless you take the opinions of a suficiently large amount of people from that location.

I suppose whenever it is good or bad depends a lot from the culture, in wich case the culture is probally more to blame than the tool itself.

The invention and diffusion of an apparatus has many social,political, and educational effects that very often are not understood until some time after they appear in the world. The telephone, the factory, the creation of towns along riverways, the splitting of the atom all changed the world in many ways. And, like these, the internet and computing in general, have great potential for the improvement of life as well as for its diminution.