Thoughts on the Internet in everyday life

DECEMBER 2018

I originally wrote this post to start a discussion in the Farnam Street member community Discourse forum (username: ellen).

I habitually ask people questions like, “What difference has the Internet made in your everyday life?” Interestingly, the most common sentiment is “the Internet is amazing, but…”

Helped by these informal interviews, I’ve been collecting loose thoughts about the implications of our everyday use of the Internet. Here are a few. I’m VERY curious about what FS-ers might add to this, if you’d be so kind :)

Significance of the individual

While online, we routinely encounter inconceivably large human populations. For example, Bill Gates has 46,000,000 Twitter followers. That’s not a number that our brains can actually understand. Shane’s follower count (120,000) is minuscule in comparison. But in fact, if you could genuinely reach or get through to 120,000 people — if Tweets could reliably motivate action — you could really change the world.

Persistence of memory

In real life, moments become memories, and memories often become a haze. On the Internet, many past events are indexed for instant retrieval and discovery.

Learning

In a way, self-education has never been so easy. MOOCs are an amazing phenomenon, as are all the other self-serve education tools & learning programs out there. However, when you have a question, you’re now more likely to pose it to Google than to your next-door neighbor. Also, there seems to be less emphasis placed on the idea of “learning at the feet of the Master.”

Boredom, distraction & entertainment

People say our attention spans are shrinking. I don’t know about that, but I do think distraction has been normalized. The constant stream of entertainment plays into this. In The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Bertrand Russell pointed out the problems that result from excessive alleviation of boredom. Russell framed boredom as a motive for deep thought, innovation & general maturation. Being constantly ‘entertained,’ Russell claimed, makes it harder for us to concentrate on things that aren’t overtly stimulating – including our own potentially creative thoughts.

On the flipside, access to great artwork is practically unlimited, and we all have the opportunity to entertain ourselves with very high quality stuff whenever we have the leisure time to do so.

Communication & social interaction

Very big one. On the Internet, we typically converse using our eyes & hands rather than ears and voices. From an evolutionary perspective, though, this might be a less natural way of communicating. After all, speech has been around a LOT longer than writing. Also, online forums, even good ones like Discourse, exclude many important elements of IRL discourse. Forums have improved, but it’s all still text on a screen. Not to mention the radically different mating paradigm that is online dating.

This is a huge topic… please add your thoughts!