Is the Internet good or bad for Human society?

The net is inherently value neutral. You can go to Project Gutenberg and give yourself a liberal education, or you can spend your time watching lolcats on YouTube.

The Internet *does* have something of an inherent bias towards nonlocality, but that doesn't necessarily NEED to be a problem. The way the net used to work, geographical areas would actually have their own subdomain, within a larger regional domain. So you might have [email protected], as one example; and yes, the .us is the American national domain, AFAIK.

reply to post by petrus4


Very interesting information here. Please continue.. if you don't mind?
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Originally posted by my3911
reply to post by petrus4

 

Very interesting information here. Please continue.. if you don't mind?

Second Line-------->

Ummm...I could, but I'm not really sure what else to say. Is there anything specific that you wanted to know?

Good, in the sense that knowledge has increased. Bad, in the sense that it corrupts people and makes them irreverent to others.

reply to post by my3911


Just think about it - Someone can connect with another person pretty much anywhere on Earth; think of the effects; empathy, understanding, sharing of knowledge.

Science is GREAT too, but as a user has mentioned, it depends how it is used; for mass destruction or maybe to cure disease and prevent suffering...

Originally posted by 547000
Good, in the sense that knowledge has increased. Bad, in the sense that it corrupts people and makes them irreverent to others.

The only real reason why people treat each other badly online, is because they'd really like to offline, but if they did it within physical proximity of another person, they'd get bashed. It's like I've often said; "On the Internet, no one can punch you in the face."

reply to post by petrus4


If this is true I can see why the majority is going to hell. They're corrupt on the inside.

Surely children become used to the corruption on the internet and imitate it in real life.

reply to post by my3911


70% of the net is harmful i'd say which doesnt really bode that well for the creators!!

However, without it, i wouldn't have been able to do what i do... also i'd be bored #less!!!

Originally posted by my3911
I'd like to say this one last thing; I'm a firm believer in free speech, but I'm starting to think the internet should be regulated to some degree by the FCC or preferably another entity that is fair and honest.

That's the craziest thing I've read all week, and I browse ATS daily.

The Internet is the most HONEST place. On message boards and chat rooms, people are anonymous and everyone is absolutely honest with themselves. It's a way to easily connect and share thoughts with like-minded individuals, and that's just a small part of it. The Internet is the GREATEST invention in the last 100 years.

This is definitely a good thing for human society. Are we, as a whole, using it to its full potential? Absolutely not! It's mostly used for TMZ bullcrap, but I blame all that on the "Jersey Shore" generation.

A great example of what the Internet really represents is 4chan. They have a community of users who have never met each other but are COMPLETELY honest, almost to a fault when being talked about by the media. I agree that the Internet is a tool... but it's also so much more than that.