By Gordon Graham
The net: A Philosophical Inquiry develops a number of the issues Gordon Graham offered in his hugely profitable radio sequence, The Silicon Society. Exploring the tensions among the warnings of the Neo-Luddites and the brilliant optimism of the Technophiles, Graham bargains the 1st concise and available exploration of the problems which come up as we input additional into the area of our on-line world. This unique and engaging examine takes us to the guts of questions that none folks can find the money for to disregard: how does the net impact our recommendations of id, ethical anarchy, censorship, group, democracy, digital truth and mind's eye? freed from jargon and entire of stimulating rules, this can be crucial studying for somebody wishing to imagine basically and informatively concerning the complexities of our technological destiny.
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Additional resources for The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry
Example text
With the concept of virtual reality we arrive at the apotheosis of the Internet, and at the final chapter. My own ambition is partly to set out the issues as clearly as I can and to adduce the most cogent arguments on each of the opposing sides so that readers may arrive at their own conclusion. This could properly be deemed sufficient reason for a book of this sort. Assessing the significance of the Internet is a transparently important task at the present time. But I have a further aim: to show that despite (or perhaps because of) its ancient lineage, philosophical reasoning in the Socratic tradition is the best means of doing so – to show, in short, that philosophy is of contemporary and not merely antiquarian interest.
In particular it ended the role of the public meeting and the place and importance of political oratory within it. One of the great early masters of radio for political purposes was Franklin D. Roosevelt. His Secretary of Labour, Francis Perkins, recalls how the relationship with voters was subtly altered by this medium: When he talked on the radio, he saw them gathered in the little parlour, listening with their neighbours ... I have sat in those little parlours and on those porches myself during some of the speeches and I have seen those men and women gathered around the radio, even those who didn’t like him or were opposed to him politically, listening with a pleasant happy feeling of association and friendship.
But is it truly innovative? Is it a radically new form of communication? It could be the case, and indeed may be, that the satisfaction of mass entertainment which television supplies (and it is notable that millions of people can be tuned into the same programme at the same time), makes us no better off (and possibly worse off) than a generation in which equally many millions entertained themselves in a variety of different ways. Something of the same sort can be said about television with respect to the second criterion of novelty outlined above – impact on social and political forms of life.