(“The Baptism of Christ” Aert de Gelder, 1710)
Imagine yourself in Rome in the 15th century. The church is absolute, (or is it?) the best artists (whom so happen to also be the best scientists, a term that doesn’t exist yet) are gathering in Rome, called to provide some decorative touch to the Vatican, though some are secretly supplanting its power with hidden information in their work. Now imagine someone begins describing to you a source of near infinite information, with limitless capacity that can be accessed from almost anywhere on the planet (or around it for that matter) and requires only a conduit to access, rather than an exact physical form. They might spontaneously combust on the spot from the mere thoughts of anyone listening.
The topic of free flow of information (brought up this week through Nicholas Carr’s “From the Many to the Few” in which Carr discusses the democratization of knowledge through the various capacities of new data storage systems; namely, the internet) is a point of high interest through history. Major shifts in epistemology continuously have a deep and diverse affect on society, and hence on numerous other things that society effects, until the next major shift comes along. These epistemological shifts happen occasionally throughout time but perhaps the most important historical shift should be discussed first; the printing press, which had the largest affect on the spread of information and knowledge in history until now and led to things like the development of the “middle class” (or the proletariat) and widespread advances in science.
The printing press was the start of a shift in power from religion to science. A shift from who controlled information. Until the renaissance Europe the church controlled every piece of information it could, seeking to proliferate and prolong its waning power at whatever the cost; power that both sustained and asserted that control. The printing press, originally attributed to Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, was the early start of what would eventually become the Renaissance. Relative to the context of the 15th century the spread of information thanks to this invention was rapid. The church saw it as an opportunity to begin the semi-mass production of bibles, in an effort to expand Christianity. It was of course eventually used to spread the word of science, literature and art.
The printing press is in this way directly comparable to the internet. Where as previously nearly any piece of information could be found in a book, any piece of information can now be found on the internet. In either case it can be said that the information can be gained provided one has the skills/knowledge to retrieve it. The internet represents, however, far more than it remains to be physically; which is another important distinction. The tangibility of a book is, while remaining to be less than that of say hieroglyphs, is one hundred fold that of the internet. (In another twenty-five years what will be left over to preserve and curate from our time?) However, it is the lack of inherent physicality embodied in the internet that allows it to be so effective.
Its physicality is only as great as the conduit through which it is accessed. It is a digitized, unintelligent hive-mind in a way. The collective un-consciousness of society; a self perpetuating cycle of the knowledge people seek and the knowledge which is popularly available. The correlation between these two distinct categories is something to be explored. Does society affect the internet or does the internet affect society? The truth, as it usually is, is somewhere in between. However, one might hypothesize that something like the Pareto Principle might apply; that is, 20% of the information on the internet is accessed regularly through popular websites, while the remaining 80% of the information is not regularly accessed (or at least, not by a large audience). This brings me to my next topic; the flux of the internet.
