14.0325 Chomsky on the Internet

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: 10/09/00

  • Next message: by way of Willard McCarty: "14.0327 method/methodology in the definition of primitives?"

                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 325.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
    
    
    
             Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2000 07:28:37 +0100
             From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
             Subject: Noam Chomsky's views of the Internet
    
    Dear Humanists,
    
    Hi --I hope you are doing well --here are the interesting views of Noam
    Chomsky on the patterns of the Internet --thought might interest you--
    
    Question: What do you (Noam Chomsky) think about the Internet?
    Answer (of Noam Chomsky): I think that there are good things about it, but
    there are also aspects of it that concern and worry me. This is an
    intuitive response--I can't prove it--but my feeling is that, since people
    aren't Martians or robots, direct face-to-face contact is an extremely
    important part of human life. It helps develop self-understanding and the
    growth of a healthy personality. You just have a different relationship to
    somebody when you are looking at them than you do when you're punching
    away at a keyboard and some symbols come back. I suspect that extending
    that form of abstract and remote relationship, instead of direct, personal
    contact, is going to have unpleasant effects on what people are like. I
    will diminish their humanity. I think.
    
    Reference:
    ---------
    More thoughts on *Internet* can be read at
    (http://mitpress.mit.edu/chomskydisc/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000001)
    
    Thank you.
    Sincerely
    Arun Tripathi
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 10/09/00 EDT