Review of Open Lecture with David Gelernter
 David Gelernter |
Gelernter presented insights to his criticism towards today’s Internet use. He said, “The fundamental paradox of the Internet (like the fundamental theorem of algebra)—if this is the information age, what are we so well informed about? What do our children know that our parents didn’t? Of course children know how to operate computers, but these are trivial skills. They don’t know any more about science, engineering or software structure than their grandparents.“ Gelernter went on to talk about the Internet economy: “Some people believe that the Internet will create a new economy in which people will volunteer their efforts instead of working for pay. That will never happen. We need food, clothing and shelter and always will. The Internet can’t produce these things; can’t deliver them. And if a farmer works hard to grow food, should he give it to you free just because he’s heard that this is the Internet age? Of course, maybe you can get the food you need by giving the farmer something in return—and then we can return to a Neolithic barter economy, unless the something you give him happens to be money. The Internet will change the world economy by creating a global free market in everything. The market will be a distributed, world-wide property of the Cybersphere, of the Internet fabric itself; it won’t be centralized or operated by one company or organization. Of course shops and auction houses will continue to exist. But if I want to buy something or hire someone, I can also post a note to my Lifestream (marked “public”) and expect to receive offers to sell; likewise if I want to sell.”
David Gelernter then focused on today’s utility of the Internet: “Returning to the Internet Paradox: if this is the information age, what do our children know that our parents didn’t? They know about now. “Nowness” is the most important aspect of Internet culture. What my friends are doing, the current activities of government institutions and markets and scientific (and pseudo-scientific) debates, wars and rebellions, public opinion and elections, the weather and the traffic and the restaurants and shops—all this information about now comes pouring in. We live in a constant tropical downpour of now. All this nowness resembles the light pollution created by a large city, which makes it hard to see the stars. A flood of information about the present shuts out the past. And without the past – the future – in fact space instead of time. (and in the US at any rate young people don’t seem to know any history—because we haven’t taught them any; and they don’t seem interested enough to discover history for themselves.) But a sense of time is one of mankind’s central intellectual achievements. We are returning not to a pre-literate but to a pre-temporal society before the idea of history gradually coalesced like dew in the soft morning chill—can no longer see where we’re going; out headlights are dead. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
In the whole history of technology we’ve never seen a more exciting moment than this, but we need to understand this moment’s strangeness. Information levels are rising to the point where they are about to overflow the dykes and flood the landscape. Once that happens, we can (and must) travel in new ways. Great possibilities, great dangers. The Internet is not and never will be a mind in itself; but it will make it easier for human minds to operate in their most creative mode.”
About the speaker
David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale University and a (post-ironic) painter. He is a contributing editor for the Weekly Standard and has been a board member on the US National Council for the Arts, senior fellow in Jewish Studies at the Shalem Center, national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Chief Scientist at Mirror Worlds Inc. His book Mirror Worlds (Oxford University Press, 1992) “foresaw” the World Wide Web (Reuters, March 2001); “one of the most influential books in computer science” (Technology Review, July 2007). His work on “lifestreams” in the 1990s anticipated today’s stream-based tools at the major socialnetworking sites, and much other current software. Most recently David Gelernter is the author of Judaism. A Way of Being (Yale University Press, 2009).
Gelernter received his B.A. at Yale University in1976, earned his Ph.D. at The State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982 and joined Yale Faculty 1982.
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