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You're missing my point. I'm not saying that (e.g.) blogs, emails and texts are inherently interesting or memorable.

I'm saying that never before in history have so many people spent so much time and energy communicating with each other globally - and that being able to do these things, which used to be a pastime for an incredibly small educated elite, is now a basic social skill.

In fact what I think will happen - barring total breakdown - it's that the next step will be aggregating and tracing tools that can extract and summarise idea clouds in an empirical way.

Philosophy so far has been largely untroubled by empiricism, except at the edges.

When you have such a wealth of behavioural records for real populations on such a huge scale, you can model how people really think and act, not how they say or believe they think and act.

There are potential good and bad sides to this, but the bad sides don't necessarily fall outside the analysis, which - ironically - makes it easier to identify, label and compensate for them.

Currently we have 21st century technology with 15th century politics and finance.

This may change soon. ;)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Sep 4th, 2010 at 06:10:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, we can be fairly certain that several new "Carl Roves" are hard at work on this already and have adequate funding. What about those who want to turn these possibilities to the advantage of the many?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Sep 4th, 2010 at 07:21:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
ThatBritGuy:

In fact what I think will happen - barring total breakdown - it's that the next step will be aggregating and tracing tools that can extract and summarise idea clouds in an empirical way.

Philosophy so far has been largely untroubled by empiricism, except at the edges.

When you have such a wealth of behavioural records for real populations on such a huge scale, you can model how people really think and act, not how they say or believe they think and act.

very interesting points. especially about philosophy and empiricism...

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Sep 6th, 2010 at 07:24:05 PM EST
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