{"id":2141,"date":"2011-08-09T12:34:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T16:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=2141"},"modified":"2011-08-09T12:35:46","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T16:35:46","slug":"questioning-the-societal-impact-of-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=2141","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the societal impact of the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a must read \u2013 a very thoughtful article by Mark Wegierski (posted August 8th on ESR): <em>The Internet: Boon or bane to serious discourse?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.enterstageright.com\/archive\/articles\/0811\/0811internetserdiscp1.htm\">http:\/\/www.enterstageright.com\/archive\/articles\/0811\/0811internetserdiscp1.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Questions:<\/p>\n<p>Will the Internet offer the possibilities of enhancing serious social, political, cultural, and truly philosophical debate?<\/p>\n<p>Or, will the Internet simply deepen the extension of American and Canadian consumerism and political-correctness, and the (mostly American) mindless, ersatz patriotism?<\/p>\n<p>Two\u00a0observations made by this Canadian researcher are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One of the general effects of the Internet is the tendency to accentuate a &#8220;hyper-fragmentation&#8221; of social, cultural, and political interests, which means that broadly-based public and political debate becomes ever more difficult.<\/li>\n<li>In the case of a very large number of people, the Internet is used simply for access to various entertainment and pop-culture imageries and &#8220;news,&#8221; existing in various subgenres like &#8220;porn&#8221;, celebrity-cults, rock- and rap-music, and sports, movie, and television show fandom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read the full article here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.enterstageright.com\/archive\/articles\/0811\/0811internetserdiscp1.htm\">http:\/\/www.enterstageright.com\/archive\/articles\/0811\/0811internetserdiscp1.htm<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a must read \u2013 a very thoughtful article by Mark Wegierski (posted August 8th on ESR): The Internet: Boon or bane to serious discourse? http:\/\/www.enterstageright.com\/archive\/articles\/0811\/0811internetserdiscp1.htm The Questions: Will the Internet offer the possibilities of enhancing serious social, political, cultural, and truly philosophical debate? Or, will the Internet simply deepen the extension of American&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}