Posted at 5:27 PM PST
Howdy, Pardners…
Given that…outside of art and pop-culture (are those terms separable?), any action taken should (in theory) be the solution to a perceived problem.
Therefore… the efficacy of any action taken should be quantifiable by simply measuring the expected results against the actual results.
[Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results --
Albert Einstein]
For instance… fluoridation of public drinking water. Expected results? Fewer cavities for Americans. Actual results? Fewer cavities in Americans. It worked. Yes, there are those who are convinced that fluoridation of drinking water is a Communist plot (or the updated conspiracy… a plot by the New World Order), but the numbers show that fluoridation does much more good than it does harm.
Just as a kind of odd aside… There was a time (the 1970s) when the introduction of fluoridated toothpaste began to offset the need for fluoridation of water (a better solution for an old solution), but that didn’t pan out. It appears that poor Americans (and those who fear the conspiratorial aspects of fluoride in general) either don’t brush their teeth very often, or when they do, they don’t use fluoridated toothpaste. Add to that the criminal cost of dental care (and the growing number of poor), and it looks like we’re going to need to fluoridate our water supplies for a long time to come.
Is any of the previous paragraph true? It doesn’t matter. You will either accept it as true (and repeat it to all of your friends), or you will not accept it as true (and rant about the New World Order). A scant few will actually take the time to check my facts. Social commentators count on this dynamic. We know that only a handful of people have the motivation, knowledge, or skills to fact-check complex ideas. Quite honestly, if it can’t be fact-checked within fifteen seconds on a smartphone, it isn’t important.
Yes, my little Droogs, I just said that.
Fluoridation of public drinking water is a complex idea? Really? Yup. To figure it out, you have to like read for like more than you know like two minutes?
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The internet is often foisted upon us as a solution to a problem. I’ll be honest, in that I’m not sure what the problem is. But the solution! Store all of the world’s knowledge electronically, and then give everyone access to that information. Eureka! We end up with an American population that is so smart that evolution will take a giant leap. Yes, the World Of Tomorrow… Today!
Measurable? Certainly. All you have to do is a bit of data gathering and perform a few thousand interviews of the first generation of Americans with life-long exposure to this World Of Tomorrow. By doing this, you should be able to get a pretty good idea about the efficacy of the internet on human intelligence (at least for that particular generation). In theory, that generation should be markedly smarter than previous generations. Right?
Well… wrong. They’ve done those studies, and continue to do those studies. What does the data tell us? It’s a brutal world. The results tell us that the first generation that was raised with full-time exposure to the internet is perhaps the least mentally capable generation since, oh… the Neanderthals.
Again… Is any of the previous paragraph true?
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, because feelings are more important than facts. Isn’t that odd in this World Of Tomorrow… where all the information in the history of the world is at our fingertips, we choose feeling over reality?
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It’s the “Pearls in the Swimming Pool” metaphor. I most often use this jewel of fluid wisdom to talk about television, but I think that the internet needs to also be thrown in the pool. Ah… it goes something like this….
“Hey! There are some good things on television!”
“Granted, but there are so few good things, that it can be compared to an Olympic sized swimming pool full of shit… with a handful of pearls thrown in. The pearls are there, and they certainly have some real value, but you have to go swimming in a pool of shit to find them.”
I never was a good swimmer.
There is a way to untie this knot… you simply acknowledge that the internet (along with its cousin, television) is nothing more than a technological device that allows us to access art/pop-culture. Once that logic is in place, it no longer presents itself as any kind of solution to any kind of problem. It exists only to entertain.
Well, it exists only to entertain the consumer… sort of. If there weren’t profits involved, it wouldn’t exist at all. It’s that damnable perspective thing again.
What an elegant solution to a non-problem that needs no solution.
Have a day.
Riley
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