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Comment by ergot_vacation | Hacker News Reader

Put another way, computers and the Internet are a tool to accelerate the process of becoming more of what you are. If what you are is a curious, humble person looking to understand the world better, it can help with that. If you're a vicious self-promoter looking to crush everyone on your way to the top, it can help with that too. If you're a terrorist looking for how to build a bomb or fly a plane or use certain guns, again, it can help.

Computers are information. Giving people access to information does not magically make them moral, or curious, or thoughtful. It just amplifies what they were already trying to do.

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This sounds too simplistic (idealistic?). Maybe computers at their core are indeed pure, neutral information, but internet is definitely more than just that. It also amplifies all kinds of adverse mass psychology effects, rewards herd behavior, enables propaganda wars, provides means to monitor and control population at unprecedented scale, etc. I'm not saying that you're completely wrong, but I think you might be willing to see only the brighter side of it.

I like this, except that I think it misses that the internet doesn't just give people a way to do whatever they were going to do, but:

1. creates a giant, complex vector for the transfer and recombination of ideas, and attitudes: it's an influence and innovation engine 2. facilitates certain kinds of collective action and organizing, from traditional interest groups, to flash mobs, and getting ratioed. 3. facilitates certain kinds of illicit or illegal behaviors, activities, etc while making other kinds much harder. Anonymity is difficult, widespread surveillance is the norm; but you can hold entire pieces of infrastructure hostage, like oil pipelines, from your couch. 4. creates a new set of dynamics that we are only coming to recognize. for example, social media platforms like Facebook make it like we've all become more densely packed together, and we've not really developed a set of norms to accommodate getting along at that level of density.

An amplifier of the mind. (:

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