14.0325 Chomsky on the Internet

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: 10/09/00

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 325.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
               <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
              <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>



         Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2000 07:28:37 +0100
         From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
         Subject: Noam Chomsky's views of the Internet

Dear Humanists,

Hi --I hope you are doing well --here are the interesting views of Noam
Chomsky on the patterns of the Internet --thought might interest you--

Question: What do you (Noam Chomsky) think about the Internet?
Answer (of Noam Chomsky): I think that there are good things about it, but
there are also aspects of it that concern and worry me. This is an
intuitive response--I can't prove it--but my feeling is that, since people
aren't Martians or robots, direct face-to-face contact is an extremely
important part of human life. It helps develop self-understanding and the
growth of a healthy personality. You just have a different relationship to
somebody when you are looking at them than you do when you're punching
away at a keyboard and some symbols come back. I suspect that extending
that form of abstract and remote relationship, instead of direct, personal
contact, is going to have unpleasant effects on what people are like. I
will diminish their humanity. I think.

Reference:
---------
More thoughts on *Internet* can be read at
(http://mitpress.mit.edu/chomskydisc/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000001)

Thank you.
Sincerely
Arun Tripathi

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