The mistake we made, one that we continue to make, is conflating human communication and social interaction with just moving bits around.
We thought the net would be great because we have these bits other people might want. Let's share them! They can learn to grow better crops, ease the world of oppression, and so on.
We still think that, it's just now we've arrived at "Sending bits around is great! But they need to be the _right_ bits"
I think anybody back then would have agreed too. No stupidity required, just a misunderstanding of how progressive societies actually operate. If we had been approached with this problem in these words back then, we would have said something like "But that's not a tech problem"
Well, maybe some stupidity was at play. But heck if anything's changed.
The mistake we made, one that we continue to make, is conflating human communication and social interaction with just moving bits around.
We thought the net would be great because we have these bits other people might want. Let's share them! They can learn to grow better crops, ease the world of oppression, and so on.
We still think that, it's just now we've arrived at "Sending bits around is great! But they need to be the _right_ bits"
I think anybody back then would have agreed too. No stupidity required, just a misunderstanding of how progressive societies actually operate. If we had been approached with this problem in these words back then, we would have said something like "But that's not a tech problem"
Well, maybe some stupidity was at play. But heck if anything's changed.