<nettime> Popular Opinions about Internet

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Germaine Greer:

I have to be in favour of the Internet because I'm in favour of the
free exchange of information, but 95 per cent of what is on it is wrong,
three per cent is criminal and the other two per cent useful, if of course
you can find it. I don't surf for recreation and mostly I get my assistant
to do searches for me. I'd never join an Internet chat room and I would 
most definitely never do an internet search on my own name.

Camille Paglia:

I consider myself the first Internet intellectual. I love the speed of
the Internet and the capacity it gives me to break news. People moan and
lament and say that modern technology is the end of culture. I think
that's a mistake. The Internet is not the end of culture, it's something
new that we don't yet fully understand.

Irving Welsch:

The danger of the Net is that it forces you to engage with information
second hand. You become trapped in a cycle of webpages based on webpages.
The reference point back to human experience disappears and it becomes
stilted. The Internet will definitely change modern culture and I think it
will have a dehumanising effect. I don't surf the Net, I've deliberately
taken myself off it because I like people too much. If I needed to look
something up, I'd rather go to the British Library.

more exciting opinions on http://www.guardian.co.uk

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