After the explosion of information: click the link, the face of knowledge will never be the same

Every time we travel through different websites, we always follow the links given by the websites, one page after another. In the online world, there seems to be endless exploration, and there is an endless stream of things people want to know. But these inputs are always fleeting, and they are forgotten when they turn their heads. What remains is the anxiety of constantly wanting to know, as if they will suffer from a lack of knowledge. This is a common problem of modern people - information anxiety.

Information anxiety is just one of the reasons why the Internet has been criticized, and it is worth mentioning that fragmented news has made us further criticize the Internet. Thanks to the stratospheric effect, it is generally believed that the Internet is more likely to differentiate, radicalize, and create irrationality among ethnic groups! In the midst of a sea of scolding against the Internet, we naturally revert to our preference for print, arguing that what we learn from books is particularly reliable: it doesn't contextually explore a thing because someone will be interested in what's in a book. Verify gate. As such, it always comes across as authoritative and professional. The most important thing is that the medium of books always has a halo, as long as readers get their hands on it, it seems that everything is guaranteed to be rational.

However, holding print too high as the light of reason is not necessarily a good thing, but prevents us from recognizing the advantages that the Internet brings. David Weinberger , author of After the Information Blast: Deconstructing Information Explosion, Knowledge Transformation, and Information Anxiety by Internet Pioneer Weinberger, points out that our re-embracing of print comes from the The stages of adapting to the internet shock. We intuitively think that the Internet brings about a cognitive crisis1 , but the so-called crisis is just that modern people have not yet realized how knowledge is also changing with the rise of new media. We're still looking at the web with our old, printed perceptions. If you do not recognize this, you will inevitably be sentenced to death by the Internet, and you will feel lost in the online world.

general aspect of knowledge

Knowledge generally gives the impression of rigor because it is logically scrutinized, justified, and able to reflect truths about the world.

Knowledge is essentially subtraction, its job is to keep reducing what we need to know2

In general, our ideas have to be filtered, tailored, and authenticated in order to enter the halls of knowledge. However, the section on certification raises the question: Who is qualified to certify us? Expert authority of course! Why do expert authorities have such qualifications? We generally have an assumption for experts that they know more than we do. The role of authority saves us the time and energy to trace each certification. After all, the world is so big that it is impossible for us to know the whole picture. However, Weinberger pointed out that the act of authenticating knowledge is actually closely related to the appearance of printed matter.

What are the characteristics of print media? First, it must have a beginning and an end in structure. Taking a book as an example, if there is only a beginning but no end, people do not know what the author wants to express; if there is an end but no beginning, it is impossible to understand the source of the author's ideas. The author's idea must be complete before it can be published, otherwise the book without beginning and end will only confuse the reader. Secondly, under the requirement of pursuing the completeness of the idea, there is often a framework of word count requirements. It is not that the more words the more complete, the more complete the text is, but the text is very dependent on the context to organize the words and sentences. The author must arrange sentence by sentence, put forward statements and arguments, and gradually guide readers through their own thinking process. The word limit has a certain normative effect, encouraging the author to write a little more and finish the sentence well, which helps to promote the author to extend the argument to perfection. In addition, the nature of books is page after page. Because ideas are fixed on paper, it is necessary to promote ideas in a long series of sentences that are connected to each other in order to present the content that is closely linked. Therefore, books tend to be in-depth discussions on a topic, and long-form expositions also become the tone of the book.

After a long thought is produced, it must be reviewed to ensure that the thought is consistent or that the content is correct. From the submission of the manuscript to the birth of the book, it is necessary to go through filtering steps such as proofreading, verification of facts/sources, etc., so that the author's ideas become refined and powerful. Through this series of filtering actions, the authority of the book is naturally increased, because the reader assumes that: First, in the production process of the book, the idea has been verified many times. Since errors in printed matter cannot be easily corrected, knowledge-forming tendencies are closely examined. Second, if publishing is expensive, mechanisms must be in place to weed out competitors. Thus, the physical properties of books themselves create the impression that knowledge can only be organized, complete, time-tested, and immutable, what Weinberger calls book - like thinking3. But is knowledge really just like that?

Knowledge on the Internet

So what does knowledge look like on the Internet?

Knowledge must be contained in it because it has no boundaries. Without boundaries, there is no shape. Without shape, there is no foundation. This is different from the long-standing belief that knowledge must have structure 4 .

The carrier of knowledge actually affects the appearance of knowledge. Compared with printed matter, knowledge existing in the online world has a characteristic: it has no structure, but is connected through nodes. When paper is used to transmit and preserve knowledge, knowledge is confined to a disconnected medium. Each book is an independent entity. If the reader does not have the ability to draw parallels, the books are basically irrelevant to each other. To connect the contents of the book, it depends on the active participation of the reader. But in the online world, hyperlinks have become a channel for linking knowledge, a linking effect that can be produced without the input of readers. If you read an article on the Internet about Marxist/Marxist communism, you will find that each paragraph will probably have a few links attached to it, for example to communism, Marx , or Hegel and Feuerbach 's philosophies of Marx. In about half an hour, readers will be able to grasp the source, context and outline of the article they are reading, and even extend reading on the topic of communism. Maybe you clicked on the link because of Marx, if you follow the link in the article step by step, there is a good chance that you will end up reading an article about "How the collapse of the Soviet Union caused the Ukraine crisis" or something. This is something that simply cannot do by reading the physical book of the Communist Manifesto .

Hyperlinks allow you to roam the web, their directivity allows us to traverse between articles, and our questions continue to extend beyond what we originally wanted to know. Anxiety from information overload occurs when the problem continues to develop faster than we can digest it. However, information overload and anxiety are just representations. What we are really uncomfortable with is that the knowledge structure existing in the online world no longer conforms to the cognitive framework shaped by paper printing.

The objectivity of paper shaping in the past gave people an accurate and reliable impression of knowledge with printed matter as the main carrier. We need some proven ideas as stepping stones, where every level of stopping point has been proven, and the knowledge system shaped by books is solidified like bricks stacked together. Each book becomes a stopping point for knowledge. Because all arguments need to be verified, knowledge is seen as the truth of the world, a mirror that reflects nature.

In the Internet ecology, knowledge is organized by various nodes, and knowledge is organized by a network. How we focus in turn depends on the starting point, point of view, and focus5 .

However, the difference is that if you came here because of "How the Disintegration of the Soviet Union Caused the Ukrainian Crisis", and want to know why Ukraine was bombed by Russia for no reason, click the additional link in the article, you have the opportunity to come into contact with nationalism, Soviet Confucianism, the proletariat, and thus come into contact with Marx's communism, and have the impression that the ideas of this guy Marx are really harmful! You will still understand the above topics, but the starting point of your attention, with the directional blessing of hyperlinks, will make you have a very different view of Marxism than a reader of the Communist Manifesto in his hand. Feel.

The Internet is like a wild child

Because the Internet can provide multiple and broad links, it is easy for us to focus too much on the information anxiety brought by the Internet. In addition, there is no one finalized certification body to check the content on the Internet, and the inaccurate and untrue content on the Internet also makes It is easy for people to feel distrust of the Internet, and even think that the Internet will only create the truth and make lies, and it will not help in improving knowledge. However, such comments ignore the creative side of the web, whose decentralized structure is very beneficial for generating new knowledge.

Knowledge is always in a context that develops out of some type of network and is maintained by some kind of connection6 .

Weinberger argues that seemingly trivial connections shatter the everlasting impression of knowledge. Beneath all the stable and objective appearances, the connection-oriented nature of knowledge is hidden. Knowledge is inherently social. It has always been in a context and developed from the network. Even in think tanks and school departments, it's smarter to bring academics together, but the practice is to concentrate expertise in the hands of a relatively small number of people. Take Darwin again, from conception to publication, in a rich network of colleagues and correspondence. After his works were published, they first circulated in the scientific world, then entered the network of writers, and finally entered the network of culture and history7 . The advent of the Internet, which allowed some ideas to flow in an intertwined network, highlighted the conditions under which knowledge arises from connections, adding to the dynamism of knowledge improvement.

The Internet has brought expertise to the surface, and many people with different ideas and knowledge are connected to the Internet8.

Taking scientific knowledge as an example, expert certification still has a special place on the Internet, but the line between experts and amateurs has become blurred, and more and more people are providing information, entangling the community with formal organizations. We can place data in digital repositories so that they can be discovered and reused9 . It is equally important for a scientist to know how previous experiments failed. From a publication standpoint, only positive results are valuable, and a process where nothing happens is less likely to be published. In contrast, in the digital age, where loosely structured networks allow different people of insight to engage in various conversations, a network organized by a group of people can instead chew through problems, leading to new ideas, or adding some fragmented ideas to the mix. develop and generate value. This kind of dialogue can speed up the generation of knowledge. Scientists and amateurs have a gap of certification, but through the Internet, everyone can reach out and cross this gap. The declassification in it is more in line with the objectivity of science, and it can also make scientific knowledge popularized more quickly.

The Internet, on the other hand, is redefining scientific knowledge by the same magnitude. Networked knowledge has created a new model -based way of knowing. It is difficult for the human brain to make predictions about real life, but the model-based cognitive method can grasp the complexity of reality. As long as you keep feeding them with data, you can rehearse the results10 . It is by building computer models that systems biologists simulate what happens when millions of components interact.

Knowledge becomes an interpretation

Knowledge that exists in the online world has a decentralized connection structure, which also means that we can learn about one thing through different connection forks. If you typed the word " Schopenhauer Misogyny " into a search engine, his masterpieces such as " The World as Will and Representation " will be excluded from the results, but this does not mean that "The World as Will and Representation" "The article was deleted, but quietly floated in the river of flow until a keyword was entered, and this series of content was fished out of the river of flow. With the input of keywords and the number of hyperlinks, there are opportunities to narrow, expand, and even change the scope and direction of our cognition of things.

In addition, the directivity of hyperlinks allows us to experience knowledge differently. This can be experienced in two ways: hyperlinks weaken the author's status; secondly, hyperlinks allow each fact to have a continuous, multifaceted, and interconnected way of refuting. Regarding the first point, when authors publish articles on the Internet, most of them will attach a link to the source of the citation, pointing directly to the database of these data sources. If readers are curious about the source or are dissatisfied with the author's point of view, they can trace the source back to the source, and then find a place to challenge the author from the source. Thanks to hyperlinks, the author no longer has the final say.

If the power of hyperlinks is further extended, we will be able to follow other links, giving a thing more different, or even mutually contradictory, angles. Taking political events as an example, the confrontation between the people and the government makes both parties only seek information that is beneficial to them to build their discourse in order to win the support of centrists or dissidents. Both sides can find an angle that fits their position to understand the whole event. In this context, in addition to zooming in and out of events, both sides are particularly prone to accuse the other of releasing fake news.

The longer we spend on the Internet, the more evidence we see that we can't agree on anything 11 .

Although it is difficult to find absolute authority on the Internet, the certification body will still exist, but it will no longer play a decisive role as it used to when there was no Internet. Weinberg argues that, as knowledge becomes hyper-connected, the Internet pushes immutable truth out of the house of knowledge, and instead allows opinions and interpretations to enter, adding elements of human uncertainty and incompleteness to knowledge. This is not to abolish some objective criteria and assert that all opinions are relative, but that networked knowledge needs to be carried out in a specific dialogue, context, and some fact-based interpretations will be particularly weighty, but not irrefutable. The meaning of objects varies from person to person, and we have different attitudes and views on an event because of different positions, which promotes some space for interpretation and even refutation.

Weinberger believes that mixed opinions do not mean that the world is sinking, but that under the constraints of the paper medium, many dissenting voices do not have an open voice channel. Restore the complex side of the world. Authority is a stop sign, and people are limited by the objectivity shaped by authenticating authority, giving rise to an optimism about knowledge that "everyone agrees on the facts". However, in the hybridity of the online world, there is a hidden dialectical vitality. Ideas, themes, facts and knowledge are all placed in the network of reference, discussion and argumentation, constantly changing and applying.

Human nature plays a significant role on the cognitive level

Of course, knowledge can also be misapplied at times, such as when Hitler misused Nietzsche's work to reinforce his national fanaticism long before the advent of the Internet. The misuse of knowledge is not unique to the Internet, and while we see it happening every day, we still create the impression that this is a problem unique to the Internet, and that this is not the case with books. Rather than saying that this is the fault of the Internet, it is better to say that people's cognition has always involved many subjective factors, but the Internet has revealed the role of human nature on the cognitive level: we are born with the ability to find like-minded people and enter "the same". temperature”, and the tendency to rationalize one’s own position.

Weinberg believes that the stratosphere is needed to some extent. Contradictory or dissenting views are essential to the macro-development of knowledge, because opposing views help inspire new ideas and make the truth clearer and clearer. But before it can be criticized by dissidents, knowledge also needs the joint efforts of people with the same position to develop some fragmentary ideas into a knowledge system. Under the premise of "jointly creating a set of knowledge systems", the importance of consensus and consistent positions cannot be ignored.

Take theology as an example. Theology is based on the premise of identifying with Christianity, so it can continue to develop. The criticism of atheists does help theologians to find the imperfections of their arguments, but the critics do not help theologians. The duty to perfect the theory, to "perfect knowledge," to revise the theory, remains on the theologians. It can be seen that if the knowledge of some schools is to be perfected and revised, it also needs a certain degree of common recognition. In this sense, Weinberger believes that there are advantages to gathering of the same kind. Without the basis of recognition and recognition, knowledge is difficult to perfect and correct.

On the other hand, there are also different "ethnic groups" on the Internet, and even if they have always believed in the truth, for some people, it is unconvincing. Weinberg believes that there must be ignorant remarks in the greatness of the Internet. In the face of the openness of the Internet, we can only agree with one general rule:

What we have in common is not knowledge that we all agree on, but a world where we always disagree. 13

If we agree with the diverse differences that exist on the Internet, we may be able to accept it: some things are too big for us to grasp, and in the end we can only settle down on the Internet with an attitude of agree to disagree. Opponents may say that such a conclusion seems to be a negative attitude that cannot be summed up by the Internet ecology, but Weinberg believes that the anxiety we experience on the Internet is in fact just constantly confirming that the world is too big. One cannot know all the facts.

Weinberger's paradox?

While criticizing the old book-based type of knowledge, Weinberger used books as a medium to talk about the advantages of the Internet. Wasn't he just smacking his mouth, and even getting more and more swollen?

This question contains the premise that "since he criticizes books, he is not qualified to use them again". In retrospect, his criticism of print is not to abandon the use of print entirely, but to break an inherent myth about print: knowledge on books is necessarily objective, even better than the Internet. He prefers to express the argument that "books are not as objective as we think". The Internet and books are not antagonistic, but complementary. The key lies in how to select the appropriate medium to achieve the best effect of information or knowledge transmission.

Weinberger believes that the advantage of constructing a discourse on the Internet is that the author does not have to scramble to meet the requirements of publication, 14 hard-writing what can be expressed in 2,000 words into 40,000 words. The author allows the length of the discourse to develop naturally. Second, the Internet allows readers to react instantly and exchange discussions with authors.

Immediate responses do speed up interactions, but they also sacrifice space for readers to ponder on the topic. The speed of the Internet often shortens the response time, which makes it easy for people to not be deep enough or even biased when they encounter problems and think about issues at the beginning. The substantive nature of book lending tends to be gradual, less distracting, and more accepting of the author's lead. If we look back at the content discussed in the book, Weinberg also expresses it in book form: he hopes that readers can have a more coherent and comprehensive understanding of the Internet. Plus he's not just commenting on the advantages of the Internet as a medium of knowledge, but also by looking back at how our way of knowing is affected by the evolution of the medium.

Of course, if we want to preserve the continuity of the evolution of the context of the fire, it is better to use books to express nature. Weinberger did not intend for readers to make instant comments, but wanted to play the role of a tour guide, from the print age to the Internet, to point out how knowledge is influenced by media and have different characteristics, so that his discourse can be expressed more clearly. persuasive. The reader needs to be highly focused in order to appreciate the changes.

Cultivation of media awareness

Weinberger, who wrote the book back in 2011, is undoubtedly optimistic about the vision of the Internet revolution. But to this day, the Internet has been identified as an accomplice in promoting the post-truth. Weinberger constantly emphasizes that the Internet helps to communicate and generate knowledge, further confirming that the Internet itself has creative characteristics, but such characteristics are very consistent with the "creative" characteristics of post-truth "reconstructing facts to concoct fake news" . So how do we think about Weinberger's view of the web? Is his perception out of touch with reality, or is there still merit? Weinberger may have exaggerated some of the benefits of the Internet, but his thinking still has the effect of inspiring others, allowing readers to develop their own perceptions of media literacy.

Weinberger's anatomy of the web has taught us a lot, especially when it comes to fostering media awareness, as seen in his analysis of web settings. He examines hyperlinks, search engines, and the link structure of the web, and shows how our cognition is affected by these settings. For example, what makes the Internet good for knowledge production is its immediacy. In his book, he pointed out that rapid response and interaction can speed up knowledge production, and continuous interaction and connection speed up the speed of digesting problems and shorten the time to extract solutions. The link is designed to facilitate a call to act/react.

Likewise, we can connect with everyday experience through his observations of the Internet. From the perspective of personal thinking, the message mechanism encourages instant comments and interactions with others, but the tendency to browse to another web page before digesting the information is not very beneficial. This is contrary to the fact that thinking takes time to digest. When we realize the impact of connection, we realize that the sooner you have to react to something, the more alert you are to those reactions. Weinberger's observations and the vocabulary provided help to deepen our thinking about the media and increase our sensitivity to the relationship between information and communication media.

Another insight of Weinberger is that he stated that "books hide the original turbulent face of the world, until the emergence of the Internet, restores the original noisy side of the world." Humans are inherently complex, and our cognition of the world is complex, but we have never been aware of it. Our subjective wishes often affect our perception of the objective environment, which is completely magnified in the online world. When he analyzes the changes in the type and dissemination of knowledge brought about by the Internet, he reminds us again and again that human beings have a tendency to pursue consistency. What post-truth manipulates is precisely the tendency to want information consistent with one's own will. Long before the advent of the Internet, there were quite a few political/religious fanatics who chose to believe in the fabricated truth, which is not necessarily a new phenomenon.

The influence of human nature on cognition is not insurmountable, but requires great self-control to avoid misjudgment. Achieving such a state requires a corresponding level of awareness of the set characteristics of the media. As we learn about the creative nature of the web, encouraging immediate responses from users, and how algorithmic mechanisms reinforce our quest for consistency, we will be more cautious about falling into the trap of post-truth. Even if you fall into the pit, you are still aware that you are trapped in it, and because you are in the pit without knowing it, that is a precursor to becoming an ideological fanatic.