A QUESTÃO CENTRAL À ESCALA GLOBAL

À entrada da 2ª década do séc. XX, a questão é: O que é que a internet mudou/estar a mudar em nós? No site da edge.org podemos ir lendo as dezenas de respostas que, durante um ano, personalidades de vários quadrantes responderão. Aqui deixo alguns excertos para 'abrir as portas' da leitura:

The Internet may well be considered an oracle, the builder of composite and hybrid knowledge, but as it is today — is its present instantiation actually inhibiting the very cognitive nature of reflective and creative thought?

NERI OXMAN
Architect, Researcher, MIT; Founder, Materialecology

The Internet may not have changed how my brain works but if you take "thinking" to mean the interaction between what's in your brain, what's in other people's brains, and what's in the environment around you, then the Internet is changing everything. In my line of work, as a writer and journalist, "changing the way you think" is now more of an imperative than a possibility: if you don't change you risk extinction.ALUN ANDERSON
Senior Consultant (and former Editor-in-Chief and Publishing Director of New Scientist); Author,After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic

Today my work could not be possible without the Internet. I do not mean only the access to information: it has fundamentally changed the way I approach a research problem. ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABÁSI Complex Network Scientist; Distinguished Professor and Director of Northeastern University's Center for Complex Network Research; Author, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Els

The Internet requires an active engagement and as a result it is full of surprises. You don't watch the Internet, you search and link. What is important for thought about the Internet is not the content, it is the new activity of being a searcher, with the world's store of knowledge and images at your fingertips. LEE SMOLIN
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics