House of Eratosthenes

Fascinating discussion going on at Dr. Helen‘s place, the inspiration for which is a Forbes column arguing the innerwebs have not offered us a tool that can unite us, but rather, a tool that crystalizes our differences.

The Web doesn’t bridge divisions; it multiplies and sharpens them. It doesn’t build consensus or national coalitions; it grows factions. Truth be told, the Web doesn’t network people at all–it lets them network themselves, which is quite different…During the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Nobody would ever say that about anything posted on a cronkite.com or a CronkiteTube.
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The challenge now is to get disconnected people to accept how little they can trust themselves and their closest friends. People who live overwired lives — which means the young, especially — may easily suppose that they have a very good picture of what all the rest of America is thinking. Quite a few of them are going to find out otherwise in a few weeks…

The thread underneath debates the merits and liabilities of spending time prowling blogs that disagree with one’s mindset. Sissy Willis points out the first thing that popped in my head…

The toe-curl factor is too great when I attempt to read “blogs and other sites” that “do not necessarily agree with [my] viewpoint.” I think they have bad ideas; they think I’m a bad person.

Add to that the observation that, if they’re there just to invent just so much b.s. about Sarah Palin faking her pregnancy or thinking dinosaurs roamed the earth 4,000 years ago, whatever-it-takes-to-win…the sensibility of Sissy’s pontificating becomes all the clearer. It is, almost literally, wallowing in muck (the word “muck” being a polite substitute for something else).

Why spend good time and energy seriously considering ideas that are so bad, that in order to be made presentable they have to be supported with lies?

dlb continues with a partially sympathetic line of thinking…

I’ve encountered this argument in various forms, but haven’t found it to be persuasive. Perhaps this is because I use the web to find the most credible sources that I can relevant to issues that concern me.

These individuals and institutions are often ignored by the MSM as they tend not to frame their arguments in the terms of a morality drama.

So rather than polarizing my views, I think that the internet has enabled me to recognize that those whom I disagree with are usually acting in good faith – that we share an ‘honest disagreement’.

In response to this, I would offer the notion that this thing we call the Internet has shifted the responsibility from broadcaster to receiver.

Walter Cronkite looks at the facts of what’s taking place on the ground, and comes to a conclusion. He disseminates the conclusion, under the guise of disseminating fact. President Johnson, apocryphally but accurately, surmises if he’s lost Cronkite he’s lost America.

Fast forward forty years — this web site says Barack Obama is a Muslim. This other web site says people who think Obama is a Muslim, are idiots. That other website over there says he attended a Muslim school. Another website points out he doesn’t anymore. Some web sites make things up, others don’t, others, stick to facts as best they can but get fooled by other websites that recycle garbage. Matt Damon thinks Sarah Palin wants to make America into a theocracy, and will, as soon as the old man bites it. Charles Gibson interviews Palin and tries to make her look like an airhead. Mark Levin gets ahold of the transcript that was edited to accomplish this, and posts the entire thing.

What is happening is caveat emptor. And it is a good thing. When you view the world through a Cronkite monocular, missing any perspective whatsoever, you may understand the principles of science and skepticism just fine and dandy — but you can’t very well use them, can you? You just get this tidy, sanitized, polished image of what’s going on, carefully cleansed of any contradictions large or small. So you can’t find the answers about what’s missing, if you don’t know what questions to ask. Therefore — yes, of course Johnson loses America if he loses Cronkite. This thinking stuff through, it isn’t even a responsibility Cronkite’s viewers surrendered…it was taken from them forcefully.

Left with the choice of simply believing versus not-believing, they had no opportunity to inject their own critical thinking into the process whatsoever. They might as well have been told their favorite color for a particular day was purple.

If being unmoored from that kind of Oceania drives us into separate factions, that’s a situation I’ll gladly accept.

In fact, it really makes me wonder what else we weren’t told before the Internet came along to divide us this way. A bunch of stuff…at the very least. And probably a good deal more than that.

What a boring endcape! Let’s make a list. Wilson, savior of Democracy. Roosevelt, saving us from the Great Depression. Russia, our ally in WWII. Truman, hard on Communists. McCarthy named names and smeared innocent people. Eisenhower was stupid. Kennedy won the election. Kennedy’s leadership avoided a nuclear war. Ford was clumsy. Carter got us peace in the Middle East. Reagan was stupid. Reagan is going to get us into a nuclear war. Quayle was stupid. That should prime the pump.
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 09/14/2008 @ 14:28

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Un-CronkitingSunday, September 14th, 2008

Un-Cronkiting
Sunday, September 14th, 2008