Noosphere

The internet as the noosphere

The noosphere is the mental part of the universe. I like to remember the noosphere by using an example. Let us say, for instance, that every Bible on the face of the planet was to magically vanish. Not a single Bible in a church, house, museum, library, etc… There are people who have studied the Bible enough to where, if they were to all vanish, those people could come together and from memory be able to recreate the Bible. Another example? Let us say that the Mona Lisa painting was to burn up in a fire. The recreations of the paintings would disappear. Even though we physically don’t have a copy of the real Mona Lisa, we all have the image burned and installed in our mind and we know what it looks like.

Al Gore has attempted to take credit for creating the Internet, and people laugh it off.  Many people believe it was a group of professors and scientists; they wanted to share information through the computer. But some people believe that Teilhard da Chardin is the person who deserves the credit of creating the Internet in 1925. Teilhard de Chardin refers to the noosphere as a concept of the Internet as an evolution of thought and consciousness. The Internet alone can be used as a form of the noosphere. This quote by John Perry Barlow should further explain. "Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.”

Information Cocoon

The article of choice for this here particular blog is entitled “Information Cocoons." The majority of readers know what information is, but for those who do not, here is a very simple definition to go by: information is facts provided or learned about something or someone. A definition for cocoon would probably get too scientific for what I am going for right now. So off the top of my head, a definition you can use is the enclosed shell that caterpillars are inside while they transform into butterflies.  When information and cocoon are used together, it creates for me a picture of information that is stuck inside an enclosed barrier. That is what the majority of the article concerns. The article defines an Information Cocoon as “communication universes in which we choose and only what comforts, and pleases us.” The article had a couple points that I felt were very informational. Two philosophers, James Fishkin and Bruce Ackerman, suggested that we have a national holiday in which we have big group deliberations and name it Deliberation Day. Irving Janis did research on groupthink, defined as “the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility.” He stated that groupthink would be the reason that Deliberation Day would never work. People become less creative in groups due to informational influences (failure to disclose what they know out of respect for the information publicly announced by others) and social issues (people silencing themselves to avoid the disapproval of peers and supervisors). This article was very informational.  

Information Obesity

Little kid who took in too much weak information..The food didn't do it to him.

A couple weeks ago our class had to read an article that talked about information as a resource. Before I do any reading, I like to first debate with myself and my other personalities, about what the article would be about just by looking at the name. The article was entitled, as stated earlier, “Information as a Resource”; the subtitle was “Information Obesity.” So I thought to myself, “Self, this article is obviously about information making us full, which is probably a great thing.”  Ya know? Why else would you assign a reading about information? Educators always want their pupils to be very well informed and/or full of info. After I and my wide range of personalities finished deliberating, we dove into the reading. I discovered that I was way off with my assumptions. The article was more about how too much information will make you obese. You can be fat and not be unhealthy, but any time one uses obese, he/she is not meaning it in a good way (same goes with the message being delivered). I agree with the article’s message wholeheartedly. For years, I have been stressing to not listen to everything you hear or take heed to everything that you read. Information, in a sense, can make you DUMB! A few points in the article jumped off the computer screen at me. One key point in the article stated that information was human.  I gave it a confused face (sort of like this o_O). But to be honest, that is a great comparison. Information, like a human, is mental, ambiguous, personal, and subject to personal interpretations. The article started off boring, but it proved to be most informative.

The Tree Octopus

Today (September 6) in class the assignment was to pick one website from a list of 10 or so, and then investigate them. After the investigation process we were to answer a couple questions on the authenticy of the website. Well, being the curious guy that I am (slightly worse than George the Monkey), I picked the craziest website that I saw. The website I chose was The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. If we were not in class the amount of "LOL'ing" coming from me would have been uncontrollable. At first glance this website seems very much legit, since it has a ton of info, a bunch of links, and some footage. But c'mon, a "Tree Octopus"...Really though? I’m giggling while I'm typing, hoping you don't see the amusement on my face. The photos where all doctored! Thanks to the one photography class I took in high school I was able to notice it. The information was all small talk - simple stuff to get the readers to skim over it. The links were all books either on fictional creatures and fictional stories or non-fictional books on octopus. Not to mention that the website is asking you to donate a dollar, but the way to donate is to hand the dollar directly to the tree octopus. The biggest give away was the Kelvinic University page. The page is the worse university website known to all educational websites. Its displays zero art, no color, the words are misspelled and no contact information. It screams HOAX. Most importantly, Octopi are classified as cephalopods (marine creatures with long limbs, big heads, and big eyes).They must be fully submerged in water to survive because if not in water they will begin to lose their shape. That shoots the entire website down. You have to love a comical read though!