[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Easy 6

its impossible for me to see how becoming more machine-like could help us as a species feel and empathize with another living being.

And there's your problem. Gotta open your mind to possibilities.

You dont have any friends outside the internet? thats hard to believe, I mean... I consider you a frie, wait... what?

I actually have one work friend. Otherwise every single other person I know, outside of my family, I met online.

The internet has actually been great for me. I predate the internet (I'm 41) so I do know what the world was like before. I had no friends in secondary school or in college. I have literally zero social skills. I am a very nice guy, a very friendly guy, but I simply can't talk to or associate with people beyond basic greetings and small talk. Mid- to late-90s I was able to start meeting people online and it's changed my life in a lot of ways. I consider a lot of people here friends, people I've known for even longer than the board's been in existence (most of the old-timers met on the old KC Star bulletin board) and have even met a few in the real world, as difficult as that is for me. And we would have never met without the existence of the internet. I would never have been able to express myself well enough to develop any sort of connection with anyone.

There are certain things the internet brings which almost nobody mentions. Namely instantaneous communications with virtually anyone in the entire world. Which may change paradigms given enough time, and the assumption that the US government doesn't destroy the 'net the way that they seem intent upon doing, in the name of security and copyright infringement. For the first time in human history, strangers in strange lands, so to speak, are actually real, living, breathing people you can talk to regardless of distance. For the first time we can actually see for ourselves that in many places people are just like us. Not to mention that we can see just how many ****ed up people live in our own neck of the woods (I switched battlestar galactica embed links above because the first was posted by a white supremecist).

Good can come out of technology. I don't believe that destruction is the only possible destination. Whether good will come out of it is the question. If it does lead to the end of humanity, it won't be because of the technology itself, it will be because of the people who created it, and the people who abused it during and after its development. Which is a real worry for me since most of the development is being done for military application. But technology itself is not evil. It's people that are evil.