The Internet Effect

Steven Taylor this morning on what he calls the Perils of the IPhone:

“It’s turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up,” said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. “It’s not a social advantage.”

Sort of blogging as performance art, I guess.

Well, I’d suggest we call it the Internet effect. The real core isn’t the iPhone, per se, but rather the effect of having the world’s storehouse of knowledge on your desk or in your hip pocket.

There’s been a lot written, recently about how the political landscape has changed, and how much more polarized we’ve become. I submit to you that the internet, cable, and 24 hour news cycles have more to do with this polarization, than anything. We’re always connected. In the last 20 years, I’ve personally become an information junkie. I’m most certain I’m not alone; It seems to be a requirement for being a blogger, anymore.

When we were not being bombarded by so much information all the time, it was far easier to fall back into our own little cocoons, undisturbed in the understanding that our view of the world around us was the accurate one. Now, not so much; It’s takes a real effort to isolate ourselves from the info streams, and therefore support our illusions on what’s going on in the world. When people find that impossible, they get frantic. Facts intrude on their fantasies, and they get angry, and upset.

I submit that it is this that is causing the extremes of political polarization we’re seeing today.  I personally believe that this effect can do nothing but move us as a country farther away from the socialist push of the last 60 years. When given the information… the truth about the effects of socialism, people run away from it at top speed. Therefore the information age… of which we are on the leading edge right now, can only hasten our move away from the socialist left.

I cannot view that as anything but a good thing, though there will be a period of adjustment.