Is the world completely reverting to an oral culture of assertions held around an electronic campfire?
No. Not "reverting". This is how culture has always been. It's just that, now that the campfire is electronic, it's easier to perceive the truth about how culture works. It's a lot more like Twitter than like an academic journal's letters page.
Kay's right that the web makes it easier than ever to interject cited facts into everyday conversation, and that is having an effect on the discourse. But he's got the arrow of time pointing the wrong way. Once, people were even more ignorant of the real answers to questions like "what's the history of Smalltalk"? They just didn't advertise that ignorance in a worldwide publishing medium.
I think the fact that the "worldwide publishing medium" doesn't have any of the filters that a traditional publishing medium has is a big factor. From the dawn of time up until fairly recently, it took a fair amount of effort to spout one's nonsense, unfiltered, to more than a relatively small number of people.
It seems to me that this can be viewed as a "culture" of a sort, tied to the notion of writing and publication, where there an implied responsibility to some basic notions-- Derrida, in an interview, for example, says "it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy."
Thank you for pointing this out. Lately I'd been feeling despondent, thinking that the Internet is mostly a sea of unsupported opinion. The surfeit of opinion seems driven by the fact that (a) unsupported opinion is easier to write and publish than carefully researched facts and analysis, and (b) opinion is also easier and more titillating to read. But really, things are improving.
Another great morale-lifter was Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. When you read how common and insane were the myths and fads of previous times, you think how lucky you are to be alive now, when the irrationality quotient is so much lower.
you think how lucky you are to be alive now, when the irrationality quotient is so much lower.
I can't tell if you're being serious or if this is the most deliciously ironic riposte that I have ever had the pleasure to read. Either way, I'm grateful.
Yes, thank goodness for our increased rationality since the days of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. If not for all the rational thinkers we have today, we might have had to endure one or even two completely irrational economic bubbles in the last decade alone. Man, wouldn't that have sucked?
Anyway, I agree that the irrationality quotient is lower, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim that it's much lower. ;)
No. Not "reverting". This is how culture has always been. It's just that, now that the campfire is electronic, it's easier to perceive the truth about how culture works. It's a lot more like Twitter than like an academic journal's letters page.
Kay's right that the web makes it easier than ever to interject cited facts into everyday conversation, and that is having an effect on the discourse. But he's got the arrow of time pointing the wrong way. Once, people were even more ignorant of the real answers to questions like "what's the history of Smalltalk"? They just didn't advertise that ignorance in a worldwide publishing medium.