Space (I Believe In)

There's an interesting phenomenon to the internet. There's a great degree of mob mentality due to the rapidity of transmission of info. However, due to the type of people that frequent the internet, there tends to be a much larger proportion of "fringe" thinkers and ideas. Since so many people are trying to be on the fringe, they'll end up on the fringes of the fringes, often back towards the bulk of society. Sometimes people just want to sound smart so they'll go against the majority to distinguish themselves. Radicals. There is benefit to this habit, but it has it's limits. Fortunately, it also acts as a check and balance against the wild ramblings of what could become an unstoppably dangerous force.

An example of the disparity between the internet sub-culture and the general population is this article discussing the disconnect between internet and live polls of the upcoming presidential election. To sum up, according to the internet (and the article), it's going to come down to Ron Paul vs. Barack Obama, whereas in nearly all other polls conducted across the country, Ron Paul barely registers and Obama is almost always behind Clinton.

In the same way are all the rotten, foul, parts of humanity able to get together and convince themselves that their numbers and proportions are greater than really exists. Using skewed numbers and biased surveys (taken from the internet) they, like a black hole or whirlpool, suck up others loitering in the vicinity and actually increase their ranks based on a false peer pressure. The shadow grows and begins to infiltrate, convincing itself that it is everything, not able to comprehend that things are different in the light or that there are powers out there that could squish them without thinking.

That being said, there are a great many advantages to the internet. If anyone would like to contribute to family history but don't know how to do it, may I recommend the LDS church's new extraction program as described in the July "Ensign". Easy as cake, no pressure, just doing good. What it is, is a program you download and start up. You create an account and when you start up the program, it loads your profile. It shows the statistics of your ward, yourself, your stake. You start a batch of names and the program downloads a set of images taken from microfilms in the church's vaults. You fill in the requested pertinent information in the fields below the image, and when you're done with the set, the newly digitalized info gets submitted to the church's database and others can look it up on the family history websites. In this way, everyone can do each other's family history work, while contributing to the mass of knowledge that is out there. It takes about 30-60 minutes to do one batch, and it can be saved and resumed at any time. Read the tutorials on their website about filling in the info, very helpful.

Sociologically, the ability for each person to contribute what they know into a vast and free pool of information for all others to benefit from is an amazing miracle. If you want to know about the war of 1812, just look it up. If you would like learn how to paint with watercolors, check it out. Curious about the history of Iran and it's leaders? I was fascinated by the article written about Iran's current president who is receiving so much media attention. Naturally, with all secondhand information, take it with a grain of salt. History is only as good as the recorder and many people are out there to twist and distort the facts to their liking. But for the most part, sites like Wikipedia are a general base of information. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica isn't always right. But, again with the checks and balances, since much of the internet information is free to all, anyone can post faults and misinformation equally. Fortunately, there's guys like Virgil Griffith who create software that can be used to pin anonymous postings on the authors (like when the Exxon Valdez story gets changed by someone at Exxon Mobile). Read more here.

If the internet were a giant ocean, free to all, there would be storms, hurricanes, doldrums, and tradewinds. The high spots would eventually level out, and the low spots would be emphasized eventually. It's a living, changing thing. Very dangerous to the unwary and unprepared, but also a beautiful place worth using and beneficial to all. If you want something, you can find it and if you look for it, you will find it. But only when everyone is equally involved in the internet will it truly reflect humanity properly. (This, by the way, is also the great flaw in all forms of media: TV, movies, music, etc. they are biased towards a subset of the entire population because an even smaller subset within that one, is the group making most of it)

the above picture comes from this website http://theband.hiof.no/albums/crossing_the_great_divide.html