Show notes
Sean found the Internet on the Internet, Marco found it in his garden, but Professor Justin Smith will explain to us that maybe we didn’t “find” or “invented” it all. The Internet could have always been present around us, and the latest technological achievements are nothing more than a natural extension of our humanity.
“Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry.”
Stay with us, enjoy this podcast, and think about what this could mean to you and our society as we move into an even more technologically advanced future.
About the book: The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning
Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world―uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology.
Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature.
Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades.
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Guest
Justin E. H. Smith
Professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris [@Univ_Paris]
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/jehsmith
On Substack | https://justinehsmith.substack.com/
Website | https://www.jehsmith.com/
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Resources
Book | The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Not-What-You-Think/dp/0691212325
Wired Article: https://www.wired.com/story/the-internet-is-not-as-new-as-you-think/
When Virtual Reality Is A Commodity, Will True Reality Come At A Premium?: https://sean-martin.medium.com/when-virtual-reality-is-a-commodity-will-true-reality-come-at-a-premium-4a97bccb4d72
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