Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The amorality of Web 2.0
More good critical insights into Web2.0. This type of criticism is a breath of fresh air for those of us who spent the 'Web1.0' years suffering because of cheap hawkish proselytisers who thought they had some sort of proprietary claim on a medium they barely understood.
October 03, 2005
From the start, the World Wide Web has been a vessel of quasi-religious longing. And why not? For those seeking to transcend the physical world, the Web presents a ready made Promised Land. On the Internet, we're all bodiless, symbols speaking to symbols in symbols. The early texts of Web metaphysics, many written by thinkers associated with or influenced by the post-60s New Age movement, are rich with a sense of impending spiritual release; they describe the passage into the cyber world as a process of personal and communal unshackling, a journey that frees us from traditional constraints on our intelligence, our communities, our meager physical selves. We become free-floating netizens in a more enlightened, almost angelic, realm.
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