Philosophy 101D

The book by Hubert Dreyfus shows his views of the internet. We see that he thinks that the emergence of this new technology, and the previlance of the media/press, have led us to be a society that does not have any concrete views on most subjects. We have become a culture that is constantly bombarded with many different viewpoints from even more different directions and sources. You can see this with some of the recent news stories that have been covered nationally. The incident with radio personality Don Imus was covered by ever different news organization on television, and radio and newspapers also, and while most agreed with the overall statement that “he was wrong,” there was also a number of other viewpoints that were also presented within each different station/anchor’s coverage. Some argued that while the statement was wrong, it was only meant to be funny, others talked about the big named politicians who go on his show and how this would affect them. The point is that even in a story such as this where everyone agreed that it was wrong, there were still many different viewpoints that were being tagged along with the message.

Another point that Dreyfus makes is that the internet has caused people to shut themselves off from the rest of society. We have people that will just sit at home and chat online instead of going out and experiencing life and the people around them. Dreyfus is absolutely correct on this in my opinion. I’m not one to sit at my computer more than I absolutely have to for school work and what not. When I hear about people who stay in and play video games on their computers and just surf the net, I wonder how they can do that constantly. That’s not to say that I haven’t played a game on my computer before, but I think to a large extint, there are a number of people who seem to do this all to often with the result that they do not actually experience what is waiting just outside their door.