Introduction: The Internet as Collective Consciousness
The Internet is a wonderful tool for bringing people together. Social networking tools such as Facebook dominate many of the most visited sites on the web and almost every site includes a comments section. The number of ways we can interact with other people online grow and increase in complexity continually too.The Internet also remembers everything. This is both a good thing and a problem with much debate and effort currently looking for how to give it a way to forget the bad things (bad in this context can mean a lot of different things).
Access to the Internet is also becoming both ubiquitous and universal.
Putting these together is oft referred to as a manifestation of a Hive Mind. A kind of collective consciousness in which ideas spread as memes, where you can get answers to things you don't know yourself just by asking as someone somewhere is bound to know what you need. But it goes beyond a collective consciousness, it is also a collective memory.
With a simple YouTube search, I can "remember" exactly what it was like (at least the visual/audio aspects) to witness the assassination of an american president who died before I was even born. I can "remember" what it is like to journey to the moon, including the entire dialogue of the Apollo 11 crew all the way there and back, including those parts not transmitted to earth.
With music, with services such Spotify, I can "remember" a tune with perfect clarity on demand, wherever I am and at whatever time I choose.
Memory Before Technology
Let's take that last point first and imagine back what life would have been like before recorded music, before sheet music, before any technology had been invented to help share the essential transient nature of music. I focus here on music, but the principle applies to books, video, news etc just as well.At the time before any mechanism to record music, the only way to experience music "on demand" would be to remember it. Our memory is not perfect but it is quite effective. In that way, as soon as a piece of music is performed and experience by someone else, it is "owned" in some way by the listener since they can recall it later. The music gains a virtual existence in the mind which can not be controlled, or regulated by the originator.
However, the wetware of our brain gives far from perfect recall; how many songs can you remember exactly, note perfect with all the words? A few maybe, but probably not many. So, as soon as technology came along which could augment that recollection process, it became highly valued.
How Technology Created Media Industries
Sheet music (for those who can read it) could assist the accurate recollection of a piece of music - it can even be used to transmit that music to someone who has never heard the original performed. In that sense, it augments the individuals memory, but also their ability to sense things at a distance - both in time and space.Because of the value such technology brings, it was quickly highly rewarded and so became protected by law (which tends to be concerned with ensuring financial reward goes/stays where it is perceived it should be by those with power). This allowed the originator to gain reward not only from the initial performance, but from the transmission of the idea/music/etc through a medium other than direct experience. It also enabled/(required) 3rd parties to add value to this transmission process and they also gained reward from that process. Publishers of sheet music, shops who sold it and resellers all were able to gain a share of financial reward by adding value as the technology needed their help for it to work.
This situation essentially continued as music became recorded and the fidelity of the transmission process improved. As each new technology came along which improved the fidelity of transmission, the value we attributed to the experience it granted us increased to, and as a result, it allowed greater accumulation of reward for those who could control the media, while those originating the memes could also (sometimes) gain greater reward too - but not necessarily.
The media industries are just that - industries concerned with providing ad controlling a medium through which ideas are conveyed, making money from providing that medium.
This is the old world, the world before the hive mind.
The Internet Changes Everything
ISPs (amongst others) provide the medium for the Internet, but completely disassociated from the content/ideas/memes being conveyed. Web sites such as FaceBook provide repositories for the memories/knowledge/ideas/memes, but as the things they hold are virtual, the ideas/concepts/memes can ebb and flow from one shore to another, endlessly duplicated and mutated in the process such that no one site can really be seen to "own" the content.Many services such as bittorrent even delegate responsibility for the storage down to the collective level. There are no barriers to bits and bytes moving wherever they are needed. Some "old media" are attempting to coral the content they seek to control behind pay walls, but that is a form of censorship, and as the saying goes, the Internet sees censorship as damage and just routes around it. In the case of paywalls, people who do have access act as vectors for the bits and bytes to leak out. They don't have to intentionally do so, but by sharing the thoughts and ideas they have around that "protected" content, it leaks.
Essentially then, the Internet now provides a shared consciousness infrastructure such that what is in my mind can flow through it freely to your mind as you read this without the need for any moderation or "added value" beyond the infrastructure itself.
The Disruption of Traditional Media
Old media industries which fail to recognise this are quickly seeing the revenue streams on which they relied evaporating, and will continue to do so unless they reinvent themselves as "content creation industries" rather than media industries. The media to transmit ideas is no longer scarce or valued, it is becoming ubiquitous and universal, and taken for granted.Currently, the "music industry" (read: music media industry) continues to bemoan the "losses" they feel they are suffering due to piracy. In fact, what has happened is that everyone can now transmit music with incredible fidelity and the "added value" they used to rely on being valued and hence gratefully rewarded for is now essentially unnecessary.
The barriers between an artist creating music and being able to share it with the world is now essentially nil. As an example, I've been creating lots of tunes recently and I've been able to put them online (through Soundcloud) and share them with the world for free. Now, one might feel the music I've created is awful - that's fine, I'm not that keen on it myself ;) and I certainly wouldn't pay for it or expect anyone else to pay for it either - I might think music being created by recognised artists is also awful too. The point though is artists can now share their works easily without the need for a media industry to mediate the exchange.
Now, producing (quality) music can be expensive still. Studio time, engineers, equipment hire, travel expenses and 1,001 other things all cost money, and artists who produce expensive music will need a way to recoup those costs if their efforts are to be sustainable - but they can no longer rely on rewards accumulated through the transmission of their work to do this as that process is no longer valued.
The film industry (currently) can still rely on accumulating revenue from the transmission process as people still value attending the cinema as a "value added experience", but the revenue from content for consumption in the home is certainly under threat as the speed of the Internet connections and infrastructure make the delivery of "content on demand" by using old technology of physically shipping media around the world much less valued (or by fewer people at least so far).
Old media companies that fail to recognise this fundamental shift in the balance of where people attribute value will increasingly struggle. It is only by shifting their business models to be content creation industries seeking renumeration through adding value in other ways that they can continue.
What This Means for Education
Now, how does all this relate to education? Historically, (bad) education has been about cramming young minds full of facts with the hope that wisdom will spontaneously emerge. Good education has always been about empowering people with a set of tools through which to see the world.In a world of the hive mind and "perfect recall", even of events which happened to other people in other places and at other times, the bad way of seeing education becomes even more obviously pointless. Clearly, there is still a need to provide some framework of basic "knowledge" with which to evaluate the collective knowledge of the hive mind, but the days of measuring someone's worth by their ability to recall facts has surely past.
As Martin Bean said in his speech at ALT-C 2009, education needs to be about fostering the knowledge-able, not the knowledgable.
The Problem with Traditional Assessment
Yet, much assessment in education is still based on the arbitrary recollection of facts/ideas from the limited local wetware available to us as individuals.In most exams, we cut people off from the hive mind and collective consciousness and then expect to assess their performance, when that environment is entirely alien, and akin to cutting off half of their brain.
In a very real sense, our individuality has been partially subsumed within the hive mind, but we are also greatly augmented by it, which is why most of us willing engage with this technology.
Most in education would now be incredulous if a teacher/professor insisted that students didn't use the Internet at all. Even in class, it is now common for students to be able to "check" things online, or to seek further clarification of points they may have missed, and many workplaces also now encourage, even expect, people to utilise the Internet to augment their knowledge when necessary.
...and yet, we still often assess students by artificially isolating them from the collective, despite this being unrealistic of the real world.
The Future of Universities
Higher education in the UK is facing drastic changes to funding, in much the same way that the media industries are. Where HEIs have historically been the medium through which individuals can access materials (lectures/books etc) and then gain accreditation, much content is now available "for free" on the Internet (iTunesU etc) and the private sector is almost certainly going to provide flexible ways for students to gain accreditation of their skills/knowledge-ability.The business model on which UK HEI is based will need drastic and rapid re-invention if they are going to survive as the private sector is certainly going to seize any niches it can, which may otherwise leave existing HEIs as untenable.
Content creation will be done by the best in the world and available for free. Assessment will be based on demonstrating real world benefit - which will mean demonstrating being knowledge-able, and so unlikely to be accurately assessed using exams or other artificial means of isolating students from the hive mind/collective consciousness.
Revenue will be gained by demonstrating some other added value. That could be the study environment itself (libraries open 24/7), access to content behind pay walls (since the leaks are imperfect), access to experts directly (to provide a much greater augmentation of the individuals abilities by a more direct connection in the hive mind...perhaps with a commitment to provide this after graduation?)...who knows. Market forces will certainly influence where added services are valued, but sitting in a darkened room listening to an expert talk quite possibly won't be highly valued when the same content is available on demand provided by the worlds best presenters.
So, any industry based on the value of the media for transmission of ideas/content/knowledge has been undermined by the Internet fostering a collective consciousness and memory. Any industry which fails to recognise that and resists it is doomed to fail. That goes for education as well as the traditional media industries.
While that means difficult changing times for those industries, it is for the greater good of society as a whole.
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
Nick
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is interesting, perhaps as the yang to your yin of social memory, is the notion of social amnesia. Social amniesia is about how we forget as a group and how the State and its arms help/force us to forget via 'official histories'. The educational system and the control of the media, the selective use of artifacts in museums even all contribute to a 'memory of who were are and who the State want us to be. Social amnesia allows for the cohesion of the group and allows for 'collective memories' to be created and thus any schism that may be difficult for the State to control is averted.
The development and spread of electronic media including the TV and Radio (in the 20C) but more commonly these days the internet including media such as facebook, twitter and you tube has an important role in allowing people not only to 'remember' who they are but also to see beyond and through the situations in which they find themselves in which their rulers tell them is normal and they are who they are.
Hence not only the collapse of communism which was a 'revolution' created in essence by the disatisfaction of how people in the Eastern Bloc were living when measured against the seductgive images and messages beamed into their homes daily via TV and film media but also the revolutions in the middle east - possibly for the same reason, there the vast majority of people are living in poor conditions if not poverty under strict dictatorial rich regimes.
I guess what I am suggesting is (and I am sure you are aware of this) there are much wider connotations for a hive mind and access to ideas than just the 'value' of intellectual property. The Internet per ce actually has (in my view) totally devalued the value of the intellectual property that we call the official history.
Knowledge is no longer the commodity owned by the ruling classes. Marx once stated 'the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class' (I paraphrase).
Political Knowledge and thus action has been totally democratized as it has been in music, film, writing, news, art etc. And it is fascinating to watch.
I don't know what that adds to your argument above, but it is what was running through my mind as I read your blog.
Rob
So returning to this 15 years later - I decided to ask AI how the impact of AI has changed the landscape...and it did a good job of capturing what I was thinking...and because I like the irony, I will let the AI 'speak for itself' and just put what it produced here, following the prompt:
ReplyDeleteNow consider that argument and apply the current position with the availability of AI to also find/evaluate/and apply knowledge and argue how education needs to adapt rapidly to prepare people for how that will disrupt things
Copilot said:
If we extend the author's "hive mind" argument into the age of AI, the implications for education become even more radical.
The original essay argues that the Internet transformed society because it became an external memory system. Facts no longer needed to be stored entirely in human brains because they could be accessed instantly from the collective consciousness of the web. The author's conclusion was that education should stop rewarding memorisation and instead teach people how to find, evaluate, and apply knowledge. Today, AI challenges even that position, because AI can increasingly perform all three of those tasks itself. AI systems can search vast amounts of information, synthesise sources, identify patterns, generate solutions, and even critique their own outputs. The educational question is no longer "What should students know?" or even "How well can students find information?" but increasingly "What unique value can a human contribute when intelligence itself is abundant?"
This creates a disruption similar to the one the Internet caused for media industries. Just as record labels and publishers lost their control over distributing information, educational institutions are losing their monopoly over teaching and knowledge delivery. A student can now access explanations, tutoring, feedback, revision materials, coding assistance, language instruction, and personalised learning support on demand through AI. The traditional lecture model becomes vulnerable for the same reason physical music distribution became vulnerable: the transmission of knowledge is no longer scarce. Institutions that define their value primarily as content providers may find themselves in the same position as newspapers and music distributors did in the early Internet era.
(continued):
ReplyDeleteAs a result, education must shift away from assessing recall and routine problem-solving. Many current examinations are designed around tasks that AI can already perform well: writing essays, summarising information, solving standard mathematical problems, creating presentations, and generating code. Those abilities remain important, but measuring a student's ability to produce them independently may become as outdated as testing someone's ability to calculate long division without a calculator. Assessment should increasingly focus on judgement, creativity, ethical reasoning, collaboration, experimentation, and the ability to direct AI effectively toward meaningful goals. The future skill is not merely possessing knowledge but orchestrating knowledge.
Education must also place far greater emphasis on critical evaluation. AI does not remove the need for human thinking; it increases it. A world in which everyone can generate convincing answers instantly is also a world in which errors, bias, manipulation, and misinformation can spread at unprecedented speed. Students need the ability to challenge AI outputs, verify evidence, recognise uncertainty, identify flawed reasoning, and understand when AI should not be trusted. The most valuable graduates may not be those who know the most facts, but those who best understand the limits of both human and artificial intelligence. Experts increasingly highlight critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and AI literacy as essential skills in an AI-shaped workforce.
jff
+2
Ultimately, AI pushes the author's argument to its logical conclusion. The Internet created a collective memory. AI is becoming a collective reasoning system layered on top of that memory. If education continues to prepare students for a world where information is scarce and intelligence is entirely individual, it will become increasingly detached from reality. Instead, schools and universities should focus on developing people who can work with AI to solve novel problems, create new knowledge, exercise sound judgement, and generate value that neither humans nor machines could produce alone. In the same way that the Internet transformed media, AI is now transforming intelligence itself—and education must adapt far more rapidly than it did during the last technological revolution.