In social networks (as well as personal teams working on projects in businesses, organizations and government agencies), peer pressure and dominant personalities can reduce the wisdom of the group.5. Critics of the quality of information on the Web and the lack of editorial control scorn such ratings as mere popularity contests, and argue, for example, that the Internet satisfies the "mediocrity of the masses".6. The only way to preserve the wisdom of the crowd is to protect the independence of the individual.
Some critics of the web are most concerned about the impact of inaccurate information on such vulnerable people. When criticizing aspects of the web, it's helpful to look to human nature and the past for perspective. How well the modelers understand the underlying science or theory (be it physics, chemistry, economics, or whatever) of the system they are studying.
Suppose we study the effects on the structure of the car of a head-on collision. However, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 concentration has increased more rapidly. The IPCC acknowledges that the underlying complexity of the problem still hinders the accuracy of projections for future climate change.
So we don't know yet whether the first decade of the century was a short-term variation or whether revisions are needed in the models.
The “Digital Divide” 31
For example, they all predict warming, and they all predict that more of the warming will occur near the poles and in winter. Many models now do a good job of predicting air temperature near the Earth's surface (that is, close to observed temperatures) for the recent past. For more than a decade in the early 21st century, global temperature fluctuated but did not generally rise.
By the late 1990s, most public libraries provided free Internet access to the public. Around the same time, African Americans, people 65 and older, and Hispanics significantly increased their use of the Internet. The gaps among Hispanic, black, and white people have almost completely disappeared among those with the same education levels.34 By 2011, there were more than 300 million cell phone subscriptions in the United States.
Great internet resources are available for what home phone service cost. The same demographic groups that were later in Internet access in the 1990s had less broadband access in the first decade of the 2000s, with similar disadvantages. In 2011, the FCC approved a program to extend broadband service to rural areas of the United States.
The Internet can be a powerful agent for change for those who have the skills, education and tools to create content. Is current segregation less of a social problem than pre-internet segregation because many more people can now create content, or is it more of a problem than before because it isolates a smaller portion of the population that cannot. From another point of view, it means that about five billion people do not use the Internet.
Lack of access to the internet in much of the world has the same causes as lack of healthcare, education, and so on: poverty, isolation, bad economics and politics. For the companies, these programs create good will and – if they are successful in improving the living standards and economies of the target countries – a large future customer base. The success of the program in implementing the technology into school curricula depends on the presence of supporting social and technical infrastructures such as electricity, networks, technical support, parental support, teachers' attitudes towards technology and school administrative support.
Neo-Luddite Views of Computers, Technology, and Quality of Life
For two hundred years, the memory of the violent Luddite uprising has been the most dramatic symbol of opposition to the Industrial Revolution. The name Luddite comes from General Ned Ludd, the fictional, symbolic leader of the movement. For example, Neil Postman argues this in response to claims about the benefits of access to information.
The conditions in computer factories can hardly be compared to the conditions in sweatshop factories during the early industrial revolution. The depth of the antipathy towards technology in the Luddite view is perhaps made clearer by attitudes towards common devices most of us use daily. The neo-Luddite view is associated with a certain view of the appropriate way of life for people.
Work in factories, large offices and business in general is seen as inhumane, dreary and harmful to workers' health. Neil Postman describes the invention of the watch as "a technology most useful to people who wanted to devote themselves to accumulating money."51. The Luddite view combines a negative attitude toward business with a high appreciation of the power of corporations to manipulate and control workers and consumers.
Richard Sclove and Jeffrey Scheuer think so.55 They use the analogy of a Wal-Mart store draining business from downtown stores, resulting in urban decline, an "outcome that no consumer wanted or intended." They generalize from the Wal-Mart scenario to cyberspace. The app indicates the location of the victim and the location of any nearby emergency defibrillator units so that a trained person can get to the scene quickly and have the tools to save a life. The use of computers, he says, embeds insidious values and thought processes of the society that makes the technology in the user.57.
It is another to conclude that because of the difference the other person is weak and unable to make his or her own decisions. The Luddite view of the right way of life places little value on modern comforts and conveniences or on the availability of a wide variety of goods and services. To better understand the Luddites' views on proper lifestyle, let's consider some of their comments on the relationship between man and nature.
Sale says that while individuals may feel that their lives are better because of computers, the perceived benefits are "industrial virtues that may not be virtues in another morality." He defines moral judgment as "the ability to decide that a thing is right when it enhances the integrity, stability and beauty of nature, and wrong when it acts otherwise."58 Jerry Mander, founder of the Center for Deep Ecology and author of books critical of technology and globalization, emphasizes that thousands of generations of people have lived without computers, suggesting that we could do without them. Science and technology (along with other factors such as education) have reduced or nearly eliminated typhus, smallpox, dysentery, plague, and malaria in most of the world.
Making Decisions About Technology
According to some critics of computer technology, large corporations and governments make decisions about the use of technology without sufficient input or oversight from ordinary people. It is unlikely that anyone would even think of developing a book reader for the blind if some components did not already exist in previous products (for example, perhaps a photocopier). A computer chip developed to float on the retina of the eye and send visual signals to the brain could restore sight to some blind people.
The chip's developer expected the cost to drop to $50 with mass production. Third, estimates of the "hardware" computing power of the human brain (the sophistication of the computing power of neurons) may be drastically underestimated. Finally, some philosophers argue that robots programmed with AI software cannot duplicate the full capabilities of the human mind.
By his definition, we cannot prepare for the consequences of the singularity, but we can prepare for more gradual developments. Is this an example of unnecessary use of new technology just because it is there? A model to predict the position of the moon relative to the earth 30 years from now (d).
In the myth of Prometheus, Zeus, the king of the gods, was angry with Prometheus for teaching mankind science and technological skills because they made humans stronger. Zeus and the Luddites represent different views on who benefits most from technology. a) Give arguments to support Zeus' view that technology helps the less powerful and diminishes the advantage of the more powerful. A comparison of predictions of the social impact of radio 75 years ago and predictions for the Internet.
Stephen Moore and Julian Simon, It's Getting Better All the Time: The 100 Biggest Trends of the 20th Century, Cato Institute, 2000. Norman, The Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Machine Age, Addison -Wesley, 1993 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, “State of the Global Climate Analysis Annual 2011,” December.
Stephen Moore, "The Coming Age of Abundance," i Ronald Bailey, red., The True State of the Planet, Free Press, 1995, s. Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Sierra Club Books, 1991, s.
