He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.Furthermore, if we spend our time and energy propagating ideas, we wouldn't spend as much of our money on other things. And we would use less resources.
This is the core basis of any optimistic scenario I see for humanity -- for all the ways corruption and wealth concentration works against human welfare there seems to be another force at play, offering potentially exponential increases in our understanding, the stuff of Buckminster Fuller's dreams and pronouncements. This force is our hope, whereas greed and habits of domination are the threats to all but the smallest sliver of elites.
When I come to the internet to answer some question of mine, making for a searcher's internet, I almost always discover interesting new things, including some of the best websites. I also feel more alive. However, when I spend my time with the bottom feeding internet, that lovely web 2.0/anti-social media churning item after item down the anxiety-fraught zombie slot machine, I almost never open up new paths. And I almost always feel less alive than when I started,.
There are some interesting people on, say, twitter, but either they use it one-sidedly, or they have a much stronger sense of self than I do. But even admitting that, I can never find a way to effectively filter for quality with anti-social media. No matter what I do, I get too much of what I don't need, including a lot of things I really don't need.
Since I started developing these thoughts and my information diet, I have become much happier with the internet and my world has become a much more interesting place.
