Would you be lost without your PC?
Published: 20 Sep 2005 17:20 BST
Jonathan Zittrain has seen a new species emerging in recent years. He calls it Homo digitas.
"The vision (is) of someone glued to a chair, focused on a screen, interacting as an object, a person whose main identification is as a digital creature, who doesn't know what to do without a signal," said Zittrain, executive director of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
But for all the knowledge available on the Internet, it's not so clear that the modern, computer-using Homo digitas is any more intelligent than the good, old-fashioned Homo sapiens.
Still, there are tantalising signs of what could be. Communities of software developers, connected through the Internet, for example, have managed to create in a matter of months and at little cost what used to take big companies years and billions of dollars to develop. That collective intelligence of open source projects shows how the world could get a lot smarter, thanks to the Net.
"Collectively and collaboratively, this is the most promising potential for really developing our collective ability to learn and think," said Doug Engelbart, a pioneer of personal-computing technology in the 1960s who conceived of the computer mouse.
But it's not so easy to say how or whether individuals are getting any smarter. Truth is, getting along in this world as a Homo digitas isn't easy. People must cultivate the ability to navigate dynamic, virtual environments for information, then be able to evaluate and analyze that information critically. On the Internet, it isn't always easy ferreting out fantasy from reality and truth from fabrication.
Just 10 years ago, if you wanted specific information you'd go to the library to check out a book. The fact that the book was in the library's collection meant that someone had vetted the work for credibility or value to society. The Web, on the other hand, holds few rules of selectivity or standards. Anyone can publish books, blogs, zines, videos or podcasts.
"The skill is moving around in a knowledge repository to... find out and learn things," Engelbart said. "It's one thing to ask a search engine a question. But it's...
For more, click here...
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
2214 out of 2449 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
