Danger and Hope in the Information Age :: Philosophy Religion Essays

Danger and Hope in the Information AgeWhere skunk we find bank in todays info grow? To answer thisquestion satisfactorily one must be view as to its presupposition. To find hopein the information society authority that there appears to be something wrongwith it, so that one needs to assay for hope in such a society. In this paper Iwould like to go forthline some of the perils of todays information society and topoint out that, though the perils are real and very strong, we nonetheless can get closely them through concerted action which I shall outline in the sectionsto follow. In short, I would like to show that there is a realistic, practicablehope in todays information society, but such a hope can n forever germ into fruitwithout effort. Hope does not come through a total negation of the techno lumbery,nor does it come through a blind adherence to it. Rather realistic hope can rule only through concerted effort to understand the implications andimpact of the technology. A s for the cultures of the Third Word, where thepotential dangers of the technology appear grave, hope can come throughstrengthening of local resources and searches for ways to co-opt the technologyand to lodge it into the cultures particular life-world.Human society is increasingly characterized by an increasinglypermeative use of technologies, notably among which are the information andcommunication technologies (ICTs). Today in Bangkok one could hardly failto be giant billboards exhorting commuters to log on the Internet and visit oneweb site or another. Name cards increasingly carry email addresses as well aspersonal web sites. In Thailand, new Internet cafs spring up everyday likemushrooms in rainy season. present tense it is estimated that there are aroundfour million people on the Internet in the country, up from provided one or bothmillion just a few months ago. These events and numbers are just superficialindicators of a deep change that is going on passim the world.Tec hnologies are obviously becoming more and more important, or atleast they are becoming ubiquitous. Since there is no time in human historythat this tolerant of profound pervasiveness of technologies, especially thoseconnected with information and communication, occurs, human beings needto reflect and think hard about what kind of life, what kind of society we as aspecies are creating. This thinking calls for a bold vision and an imaginativeconstruction of possible scenarios more than ever before, since the situationwe are facing is totally new and we cannot rely but on lessons of the past.We cannot just compare the current situation to a diachronic event in order to