The fact that we do not know something that exists in the extant expansive commons of human knowledge can no longer intimidate us into reticence. Will information stored on the Internet become unreadable to later generations because of data storage changes, and the knowledge lost? But it is a double-edged sword, a yinyang yoyo of the good, the bad and the ugly. The Internet completes the process: now arbitrarily far-flung individuals can link, share information, and base their decisions upon this new shared source of meaning. It is sad that after the intimacy of infancy our children inevitably end up being somewhat weird and incomprehensible visitors from the technological future. Maybe the Internet has given me more things to think about, but that doesn't fundamentally change the way I think. And even motor neurons must act together to produce coordinated movement rather than uncontrolled twitching. and forgive me if i may sound like a bad sciece fiction writer, but if i may give any direction to your question, i think that the Internet is probably going to evolve by itself very very soon to give you better answers that i can hopefully ever give. One important development that has allowed this to happen is that the possibly greatest of all traits the Internet has developed over the past few years is that it has become inherently boring. One stifling evening in a rented apartment in downtown Dakar my photographer and me disassembled a phone line and a modem to circumvent some incompatible jacks and to get our laptop to dial up some node in Paris. It seemed as though money was available on tap. Group behaviors are found in organisms ranging from unicellular slime molds to ants to primates, including humans. Sustaining life requires substantial energy and matter inputs. The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has characterized the post-Newtonian worldview as one of pattern, of order, of resonances in which the individual mind is a subsystem of a larger order. Organisms might interact in an ecosystem to get the food, water, or … Make music free to share, and demand that everyone build reputation on a genuine all-to-all network instead of a broadcast network, so that it would be fair. Genetic variation in a species results in individuals with a range of traits. To the extent that we plug in, we become merely another part of the network. Good luck to those much younger than me who may be around to see either the new Heaven or the new Hell. Is a limited life space of certain information and data becoming more urgent? WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY? Repetition, not truth. Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming). Complement this stream of data with Facebook, Twitter, Google, blogs, newspapers, analyst reports, Flickr, and you get a far more concrete and complete picture of each and every one of us than even the most extraordinary detail found by historians on the most studied, respected and reviled of leaders. All good art experiences are inherently psychoactive. There is one cautionary note. Nearly everyone who was part of the WELL had this sense of a very rich set of multiple perceptions constantly and instantly accessible. An alternative view is that infectious agents evolve to sabotage the barriers to cancer. This is called the "illusion of truth effect". I took it for granted that libraries which provided access to books, most of which could be borrowed and taken home, were available everywhere. Perhaps the crucial factor is speed. Is it me? We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Some software tells us "You are now friends with Peter Smith!" The future is always built out of fragments of the past. Debate on this question is in order, but the burden is surely on those who argue no. Unless using a cellphone, isolated people are essentially smile less, laugh less and speechless. This is not always a trivial task, but the mere feasibility re-defines the playing field. Technophiles writing about text messaging sometime justify emoticon use as a response to the "narrowing of band-width" characteristic of text messaging, ignoring that text viewed on a computer monitor or cellphone is essentially identical to that of a printed page. From the beginning, Engelbart emphasized that the hardware and software created at his Stanford Research Institute laboratory, from the mouse to the hyperlink to the word processor, were part of a system that included "humans, language, artifacts, methodology and training." Nevertheless, I am much less concerned about "tweeners" like me who grew up before the Internet than I am with children of the Internet age, so-called "Digital Natives." Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. And he had picked up on McLuhan's idea that by inventing electric technology we had externalized our central nervous systems — that is, our minds — and that we now had to presume that "There's only one mind, the one we all share." Each time a message arrives there's just the chance that it might contain something exciting, something new, something special, a new opportunity. Sure, with "the Net," I more easily and rapidly acquire information than in the old days. One widely appreciated and important example of both is the way the Internet facilitates hive-mind phenomena, like Wikipedia, that integrate the altruistic impulses and the knowledge of thousands of far-flung individuals. But wait, hasn't that always been the case? The second change is the diminishing role of factual knowledge, in the thinking process. Yet the sharp drop in the price of reproducing books shattered this stagnant and immobilizing mentality. Continually freeing me of the aforementioned burdens, it has allowed me to focus even more on the tasks expected of me as a journalist — find context, meaning and a way to communicate complex topics in the simplest of ways. Galileo — arguably the founder of modern science — was threatened with torture and placed under house arrest not for his scientific beliefs but rather for his deeper heresies about what validates knowledge: He argued that alongside scripture — which could be misinterpreted — God had written another book — the book of nature — written in mathematics, but open for all to see. So what is happening to us, now that the Internet has engulfed us? It sits and waits for human commands. No one has expressed this misunderstanding more clearly than Tom Wolfe inHooking Up: I hate to be the one who brings this news to the tribe, to the magic Digikingdom, but the simple truth is that the Web, the Internet, does one thing. Biological evolution, the process by which all living things have evolved over many generations from shared ancestors, explains both the unity and the diversity of species. And I can not only get software online, but in the last few years a dizzying cornucopia of free software components have appeared, making it possible to do research and development in days that would have taken months or years in the past. Answering the question implies introducing the specific apparatus which allows us to answer that specific question. For a century, research has shown that infections can cause cancer. Open Source, Web 2.0, the Maker movement, Government as a Platform are all stories we've had a role in telling. One can also see it in art schools: a moment when drawing is an incredibly fertile zone. Perhaps something similar can be said about the Internet. It replaces experience with facsimile. how do parts of an ecosystem interact. That is because I have the precise idea that my work is NOT writing emails: rather it is a matter of writing papers and learned essays on philosophy and related issues. Perhaps the Internet we know is merely a harbinger and like Ulysses returning, dirty, false and lame, it will only truly reveal itself when we are ready. The resources of biological communities can be used within sustainable limits, but in many cases humans affect these ecosystems in ways—including habitat destruction, pollution of air and water, overexploitation of resources, introduction of invasive species, and climate change—that prevent the sustainable use of resources and lead to ecosystem degradation, species extinction, and the loss of valuable ecosystem services. Regarding perception: Sometimes I feel as if the Internet has granted me clairvoyance: I can see things at a distance. Probably some bacterial ancestors look back at the period 1000-600 million years ago when both water and air were full of hydrogen sulfide (poisonous to people). Although not providing immediate, long distance contact, physically transported handwritten text messages have existed since clay tables and papyrus, and could be faster than commonly thought. Experiments, and natural events such as tropical storms or the impact of a comet on Jupiter, can be followed in real time by anyone who is interested. Now copies are worth even less than the paper they're not printed on. I'll be checking back on Google to see if anyone shares my opinion.