When the internet first truly impinged on my retarded consciousness (early in the 2000s), I had two instinctive and profound concerns, which have only increased, in breadth and depth, with the intervening years, to the point where I'm now driven to consider it, on the whole, a positively cancerous presence in our lives (quite beyond the latest backlash against its widespread, systemic, and increasingly devastating abuse). — Brian Jones

I am sure that people have said this about television, radio, moving pictures, newsprint, printed books, hand-written books, letters, even writing itself. (Indeed, Socrates allegedly bemoaned writing's detrimental effects on memory.) Not to mention such horrors as theater and social clubs.

Internet is a fact, the way we live now - just like all those other novelties that I just mentioned were in their day (and many still are today). This is not to say that acquisition of these artifacts constitutes progress - inexorable betterment of humanity. They are just facts of life, and railing against them is as sensible as railing against the weather.

I agree with the concern about distancing people. That's seen most acutely with the contemporary addiction to smartphones--people walking around staring at their phones instead of looking at and interacting with the people right next to them. Or sometimes people will be in the same location but still communicate via texting each other on their smartphones instead.

I don't agree with your concerns re morality. But I'm kind of a freewheeling libertine who isn't very fond of religion, traditional mores, etc.

Is it not time to consider the possibility that the internet, like Freud’s airplane and Bell’s long-distance feeling, might in fact not be bringing us closer together (etc.), but only pretending to, and in the end doing quite the opposite? — Brian Jones

There are so many clichés and banalities about the internet – to your points, it is possible to add that there has been an ongoing and free exchange of ideas, technologies, and knowledge (in fact, you need to pay for all these). That the internet
brings people with different cultures and views together (actually, social networking are divided into isolated communities of like-minded persons). That the world has become the global village (very few people have been interested in and follow the global affairs). By the way, what is “the voice of the global village”?
Has it been the voice of few media giants, dominating the cyber-space?

we must stop being informed and start forming well, again? — Brian Jones

To stop
being in-formed, we need to better understand how we are in-formed. As internet users and consumers, haven’t we taken part in numerous machinic and automatic processes?

The internet is just fine. It's just that we've never had such a perspective before. There has never been another time in human history (from the records we have) when people from all over the world have been as accessible as they are at present.
It's a new phenomenon and it will take some time for us to refine our interactions. Please bear with it a while longer.

— Number2018

There are so many clichés and banalities about the internet – to your points, it is possible to add that there has been an ongoing and free exchange of ideas, technologies, and knowledge (in fact, you need to pay for all these). That the internet
brings people with different cultures and views together (actually, social networking are divided into isolated communities of like-minded persons). That the world has become the global village (very few people have been interested in and follow the global affairs). By the way, what is “the voice of the global village”?
Has it been the voice of few media giants, dominating the cyber-space?

I think this critique is a bit too extreme. For one free idea exchange is not limited by financial constraint - you have platforms like youtube, wikipedia, google, forums, reddit. that allow for open exposure. If anything political censorship, traditionalism, and conformist social pressure would be larger threats than financial restriction. Second there's a large body of work charting how modernization impacts social values and attitudes; for example see World values survey data comprised of social attitude and value surveys conducted in representative sample from ~55 countries as of 2014. They've been documenting since 80s. There is a general shift in the direction of more self-expressive, liberal and more rational-secularist vs traditionalist values over time. So the impact is real and not necessarily negative.

It's certainly not a 'global village' and the cliches are mostly naiive overstatement but that shouldn't overshadow the positive trend.

And the solution is to live as the Amish, purposefully isolating, remaining ignorant, and living peacefully within the walls of protection built by the corrupted. So many ironies.

I take comfort in the fact that the good old days really weren't.

And the solution is to live as the Amish, purposefully isolating, remaining ignorant, and living peacefully within the walls of protection built by the corrupted. So many ironies. — Hanover

"We solemnly believe that although humans have been around for a million years, you feel strongly that they had just the right amount of technology between 1835 and 1850. Not too little, not too much."

:lol: :rofl:

Indeed, but in all honesty, I find myself agreeing with Douglas Adams:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

I mean, I can only take so much talk about how VR is going to disrupt education, unlike all the other technology before it, everything is going to run on the blockchain, we need to set up a colony on Mars stat, fund the hyperloop, humans will soon reverse the aging process, etc, before I just want a time machine so I can go back to the good old days.

Maybe with an iPhone and a laptop with all the news downloaded from the past 20 years in tow.

EDIT: I forgot about the monthly report on the latest machine learning accomplishment and how the robots are coming for us any day now.

Somewhat true. I don't like video games and have no reason other than they don't compare to actual games. But the amish resistance is really intense. They're trying to ignore over a 100 years worth of technology. It's impressive and retarded at the same time.

It's impressive and retarded at the same time. — BrianW

Yep. Makes me wonder if there will be 21st century version of the Amish that draws the line at AI, anti-aging and spending all your time in VR.

I'm not saying humans shouldn't keep going with technology, only that as I get older, disruption starts to feel more unsettling than exciting for me.

Good to raise this issue. It may be a bit too soon to know. In the early 1970s, some people in colleges were groping toward a style of education which only became possible with personal computers, lots of broadband cables, lots of content providers, lots of users, and affordability. In 1989 AOL was just too slow, yet. Around 2000 or so, and since the pieces have fallen into place. There is a vast pool of content and the means to access it rapidly.

I think it's great.

Word processors which displayed text on screen, and typewriters before that, subtly changed the experience of writing. A typewriter gives you the capacity of producing a sort of instant printed text. Technology changes things.

It accidental that people walk around staring at their phones: the phones, and the software, are designed to be captivating. So are things like YouTube. Even though I know they are designed to hold one's eyeballs, I can get caught up too.

If anyone finds the internet tedious, all they have to do is leave it alone. So far, anyway. We don't yet have FaceFuck implants yet, or YouTube hard wired into our eyeballs.

Is there any irony in that this debate we are having is all thanks to the internet?

No other possible media would have brought total strangers to talk about these issues with the ease it has now. You see I do remember the time before the internet and how difficult it was to study something new in philosophy. You would have to find the physical articles in scientific journals and from books, follow the references, and if they journal didn't have the journal in the library or in other ones in your city, tough luck. And of course if you didn't find the correct "thread" in the articles, the correct debate, you would be totally ignorant about that one professor on the other side of the World has written exactly on the issue that interests you.

Of course there are the negative aspects mentioned in the OP. Heck, every time I am writing here and discussing philosophical issues with people I have typically no idea who they are, I'm not playing with my children or doing something else. But have we become worse people? I'm not so sure about that.

They are just facts of life, and railing against them is as sensible as railing against the weather. — SophistiCat

If we are powerless drones unable to think and reconsider, what are you doing on a philosophy forum??

Well, for one thing, the design of the Internet needs to be reconsidered. It doesn't make such sense to use such an insecure technology that hackers can bring down a nation's electric grid, for example.

As a philosophy addict, it's great that the Net gives me such easy access to all of you. And now that I have access to what I've long wanted, the ability to be nerdy all day long every day, I find I'm ever less interested in the real world of people beyond the Net. Still very interested in the natural world, but face to face people, not so much.

At my age (67) I'm not going to worry about any of this too much, but I do have concerns about some of our younger members who are probably going to spend their entire life typing with faceless strangers.

The Net might be thought of as the world's largest city. As is true with all cities, a vast range of opportunity is available, but each of us will be forgotten two minutes after we log out. We have access to everybody, but don't really belong to anybody.

It's like what happened with our relationship with the land. We used to be intimately bound to particular landscapes, one with the Earth, but thanks to the urbanization and mobility of human populations we're on the verge of forgetting that such a thing is even possible. That's a huge loss.

Here's an example of where we're headed. As soon as it's technically possible forums will be populated with bots who will give us far more of what we want in a conversation experience than human forum members will, or can. Many of us here on the forum have already largely abandoned real world people for anonymous Internet people, and before long we'll be abandoning people altogether.

As example, as you've seen I have a collection of pet topics that I want to obsess about all day long everyday. You guys can only take me part of the way there because you have your own interests. Bots will surrender themselves entirely to my interests. Bots will give me what I really want. Bots will win. Sorry guys, you're fired, well, soon to be fired. But you won't care that you're fired, because you'll have your own bots to play with.

A key problem is that human beings aren't capable of adapting to new environments at the same speed that new environments can now be created.

Of course there are the negative aspects mentioned in the OP. Heck, every time I am writing here and discussing philosophical issues with people I have typically no idea who they are, I'm not playing with my children or doing something else. But have we become worse people? I'm not so sure about that. — ssu

Perhaps what you're not considering is the speed at which the Internet evolves. In it's current form, the Net may indeed not be a problem for you personally, and many others too.

But sooner or later Apple and Amazon etc will figure out how to provide you with some digital experience which you will find far more rewarding than playing with your kids. Or, perhaps this will happen when your kids are themselves parents.

It's like the drug cartels. HUGE profits will flow to whoever can create the most compelling addictive experience, so we can be assured that many very intelligent and well funded minds will be working in this direction in earnest.

Many thanks to all for your thoughts here.
I really must apologize, though, for yet again framing too broad a question; my (main) problem, I think, is that these questions, unwieldy as they are, are my questions; I'm stuck with them, and have thought and written about them for many years now. And this (my first) visit to a thinking-man's forum is rapidly teaching me that the effort required to frame them in a forum-friendly way looks to be self-defeating.
I'm also sorry (in a compounded way) that I seem unable to be of much use to anyone else here--I've been combing the threads, looking for opportunities, but find pretty much what I found at Cambridge (in its different way), with the same 'don't belong here' feeling emerging.
And finally (hey, I'm a Canadian), my apologies in advance for the length, selectiveness, and abysmal quality of my reply here; if I thought my question was too broad, I am completely baffled as to what to do with these responses.
Nonetheless, if only to honor their courtesy, I'll soldier on here for a bit, and then perhaps show myself the exit door.

I am sure that people have said this about television, radio, moving pictures, newsprint, printed books, hand-written books, letters, even writing itself. (Indeed, Socrates allegedly bemoaned writing's detrimental effects on memory.) — sophisticat

No doubt. But (a) the internet (as many, far more expert in its ways than I, have noted) is far more than a mere technical invention (great as some of those were); it represents a whole new and uncharted way of thinking and living; an entirely novel form of global, collective, organic consciousness that clever folk are exploiting for profit, influence, etc. (but I don't care much), and that is intrinsically exacerbating the very ailments we thought it would fix; and (b) the explosive rise of sophisticated technocracy since the mid-20th c has also offered us a host of other staggering leaps in technical capability, which we have, as a species, sensed that we are incapable--morally incapable--of embracing with anything like the necessary assurance of their beneficence--mostly notably stem cell research, and now the rise of AI (which I personally think likely to make even the most sweeping of these discussions quaintly irrelevant within this century). We slow down, consider, perhaps shape, regulate, whatever. We don't just look up at the sky and shrug our shoulders that it's raining.

The internet is just fine. — brianw

See, my problem is I feel I'd need to be a god to say that even half so easily.

It's just that we've never had such a perspective before. There has never been another time in human history (from the records we have) when people from all over the world have been as accessible as they are at present.
It's a new phenomenon and it will take some time for us to refine our interactions. Please bear with it a while longer. — brianw

This again seems to fail to recognize that the net is so different in degree as to be fundamentally different in kind. It's not just a means of communication, another tool like print or even the phone. It's a new, emergent global form of consciousness (and memory and communication, and thus society, and thus morality, etc.). And it's emerging as a form of what anthropologists call radical mutation, a quantum, disjunctive leap from one state of existence to another (in this case in the compass of a single generation), but--and here's the kicker--on a scale far beyond the grasp of traditional categories of human thought and life.
As for bearing with it, I saw what the long distance feeling did, first hand, and for me this is merely a pandemic, effectively asymptotic form of that syndrome.

I don't agree with your concerns re morality. But I'm kind of a freewheeling libertine who isn't very fond of religion, traditional mores, etc — terrapin

Beautiful.

It's certainly not a 'global village' and the cliches are mostly naiive overstatement but that shouldn't overshadow the positive trend. — aporiap

You'll want to pass that on to the International Commission on Stratigraphy as soon as you can. They're clearly making a terrible mistake.

"We solemnly believe that although humans have been around for a million years, you feel strongly that they had just the right amount of technology between 1835 and 1850. Not too little, not too much." — hanover/marchesk

The Amish are such a tough target for mockery. Full marks to the Simpsons for teasing out the absurdity of their existence!
In truth, I feel we've far more to learn from the Amish than from philosophy as currently practiced. But we must learn them philosophically; that's the sad thing.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. — marchesk

The 'long distance feeling' was invented when I was about 15. Obviously a degenerate (as Nietzsche would be kind to say).

If anyone finds the internet tedious, all they have to do is leave it alone. — bcrank

Wow. Another (to me) godlike capability. I'm feeling like a worm in the dust here.

So far, anyway. We don't yet have FaceFuck implants yet, or YouTube hard wired into our eyeballs. — bcrank

So you reject Musk's 'already cyborgs' claim? (I don't.) How about the poor merchants who refused cell-phone suppositories back in the 80's? First you can't make a living without the implant. And then the pleasure begins, conscience-free. (Unless you're Terrapin, whose conscience appears to be permanently liberated.)

No other possible media would have brought total strangers to talk about these issues with the ease it has now.[...] Of course there are the negative aspects mentioned in the OP. Heck, every time I am writing here and discussing philosophical issues with people I have typically no idea who they are, I'm not playing with my children or doing something else. But have we become worse people? I'm not so sure about that. — ssu

Put far too simply (that's my problem here, as I said), the internet does all the right things in all the wrong ways. I would suggest, in response to your very sane observation, that what we cannot speak of together, as real (non-virtual) human beings, existing in the real world, in a single time and place, we should not speak of at all. (For awhile at least; say 1,000 years or so.) It's too much, too soon.
The internet is like a great cultural centrifuge, and we're hurtling outward with it.

Well, for one thing, the design of the Internet needs to be reconsidered. — jake

Your post, Jake, deserves far more, and more detailed attention than mine, I think. And I hope you're finding what your looking for.
The thought of shaping anything so colossally complex, multifarious and liquid as the internet, seems tantamount to shaping global consciousness itself; but if we sat down, like the Amish (https://cspo.org/legacy/library/1104251605F53294166SV_lib_WetmoreAmishTech.pdf.), and asked ourselves what could be a truly good and human internet--for us, you and I and those we care about, now, while we're still recognizably us (thereby defying the centrifuge somewhat, merely in framing the question)--I think it not inconceivable that we might come upon something of use. For example, it might be available only for certain, highly regulated praxes, which we've somehow agreed will only benefit from its inhuman scale and complexity; one might think of medical research (if one wasn't me).
But I can hear the 1st Amendment steamroller in my driveway as I write that, and my little house will be no match for it, I'm sure.
My apologies once again for the poverty of these reflections.

"We solemnly believe that although humans have been around for a million years, you feel strongly that they had just the right amount of technology between 1835 and 1850. Not too little, not too much." — Marchesk

Why shouldn't there be a limit to people's desire for more technics? Not saying the Amish have it right ...inasmuch as they have there own internal politics and corruption...it's just that any system without a built in limiting factor is heading for a runaway wreck. Dependence on transportation tech and telecom to make the market society (commercialized relationships and commodification of life) work involves a shift of agency, handing over the keys (to technological determinism) as it were. As much as I wish I could say the human species has advanced beyond Genesis: "When God created man, in the likeness of God made he him" it is more relevant today than ever before. Today, through technics, man is attempting to supercede time and space with his own inventions; his inventions are an extension of himself and insofar as he identifies with them, his narcissism increases tenfold. To the extent individual narcissism can't exist without collective narcissism (through social media, filter bubbles, echo chambers, e.g), the internet has without a doubt led to a possible needless complexity of human psychology and in human relations.

The concept of appropriate technology is certainly lost: Appropriate Technology. Modernity, since it mesmerizes those who have fallen to the market society into believing they must have the latest smartphone or an automobile to keep up and maintain a relationship with others (the results of their own lives having become commodified), creates an eerie sameness in people's disposition. One of the more interesting points that came from McLuhan isn't to do with the global village: the more subtle "game changers" caused by use of technics we don't even consider, but are almost certainly true, are how use of tech changes sense ratios and ratiocination. This and that he thinks of technics as an extension of man and a primary source of narcissism are very relevant to our times. The sole question to ask is, as with all tech, what is the endgame or terminal value of the internet's purpose?

To those of you who are "progressive" (whatever that means), and think answers will be had in more and more inventions, have you ever asked a simple question: how do you know if there's progress if you haven't a clue of the destination? What, in the end, is the internet for? Whatever answer you give will probably be wrong in the far future. The internet has strongly supported the human defect of insatiable appeal to novelty fallacy. People I've talked to think it's a good thing how smartphone users have been reduced to the stimulus-response reflex of a nematode, my buddy will say something like " well, at least it's stimulating" or some such garbage; he got on his phone probably 15-20 times when we were supposed to be sharing vis a vis society yesterday (my society wasn't entertaining or stimulating enough it would appear). And that there are some who think depression is caused by being too disconnected and socially isolated is a real irony...you can make the case for the simulacrum of human relationships "internetized" being the real cause of depression; Facebook messiahs are so easily upset by their follower's comments. People are becoming overcommunicated and it is leading to social decay...serious ironies to consider here, to be sure.

The takeaway of my view is that the problem area to reck with includes psychology and sociology. We have to be honest with ourselves in concluding the internet is entirely a good thing for mental health and relationships (not only to other people, but to all that exists on earth). Also, no one asked me if I wanted to live at the pace at which AI makes possible. Slowing down a lot is a very smart idea in our times. Rewild and relearn the patience it takes to reclaim yourself from the twitchy, Tourette-like psychology the internet would foist upon you. Perhaps it is increasing our domestication in unimaginable ways. Another point: the hypnotic induction of the internet is patently real; how else would so many people consent to the panopticon of mass surveillance, and the personal data trade? The answer, as I see it, again touches on the way the advent of technologies like the internet unleash mental illnesses onto populations of users. The dark triad combo of illness is likely largely increased due to the internet, especially narcissism. Narcissism is an ogre of a disease...but selfies are now the norm. :brow: Nobody seems to care about mental health (in the age of machine learning, perhaps we should try to learn like a machine...oh wait, ha, machines don't have to be responsible for having a mind)...if we did, starting with an in depth look at internet as pathogenic (and the compulsion of adopting the newest technologies) deserves the first look.

I've generally been a late adopter, usually a decade late and a dollar short, whether it was kitchen microwaves or smart phones. I grew up in a very small town in the early days of TV, and my folks were late adopters too (owing to poverty). There was a wind-up Victrola 78 rpm record player in the attic which produced sort of good sound (tell I took it apart). In its time (a century ago), it was revolutionary.

he got on his phone probably 15-20 times when we were supposed to be sharing vis a vis society yesterday (my society wasn't entertaining or stimulating enough it would appear) — Anthony

Appalling behavior, and so common that what is really an aberration passes for normal. BUT there are earlier examples: When people acquired televisions, a larger share of their attention was spent locked on to the screens, whether fuzzy black and white or the latest big screen HDTV.

Your buddy is responding to the critical part of the technology the way he is supposed to. It isn't the miniaturized computer in the phone to which he is responding--it's the software technology. Facebook, Youtube, Tumbler, Twitter--all social media--are designed to hold on to our attention through identifiable routines. In 2000 the web used banner adds that looked like blinking theater marquees. (Porn sites pioneered a lot of these techniques.) YouTube uses much more complicated software to hook us: like algorithms that predict and serve up what it thinks we will next find interesting.

Just like a dog chases after a ball, we chase after novelty, movement, narratives, interaction, bright lights, and so on -- we can't help it. That's why a good story teller could cast a spell around the campfire 30,000 years ago.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on the web. I live alone now, but I used to get complaints from my partner about it. I start with email, this forum, the Guardian, the New York Times, and on to less distinguished sites. Later on I will take up one of several books, and will read for hours.

Younger people who don't use media heavily are probably too burdened with child care, domestic work, and jobs.

Too much media is not good for society, but the too much is driven by the business models of Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, and earlier success stories like Yahoo and MySpace, AOL, CBS, ABC, NBC, et al.

A propos: https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18101274/google-alphabet-facebook-twitter-addiction-speed?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

"“The philosophy of the Internet has assumed that friction is always part of the problem,” writes Kosslyn. But look around. The problem now isn’t too much friction; it’s too little. “It’s time,” he says, “to bring friction back.”

Our digital lives dispense with friction. We get the answers we seek instantly, we keep up with friends without speaking to them, we get the news as it happens, we watch loops of videos an algorithm chose for us, we click once and get any product in the world delivered to our doorsteps in less than two days.

Less friction means more time spent, more ads seen, more sales made. Tech companies lose customers during login screens and security verification, and as a result of slow load times. The country’s top computer science talent is paid billions of dollars to further reduce the milliseconds of delay separating our desires and their fulfillment.

But these technological wonders do not seem to have made our lives or societies more wonderful. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, drug overdoses, and suicide are rising. Productivity growth has slowed. Income inequality has skyrocketed. Politics is more bitter and more tribal. Donald Trump is president of the United States. Something is wrong."

Friction... I generally talk to my siblings on the phone; in person visits are very inconvenient (I don't drive, they live in rural Minnesota) and the friction level is high. I'd just as soon skip that.

Politics is bitter (there's some friction that hasn't disappeared!) but politics by its very nature (conflict over the distribution of power) has been, is, and will continue to be nasty, brutish, and interminable. Bitter cranks abound in politics. There would be something fishy indeed if politics turned into an lubricated tea party.

Donald Trump is president. I don't like it either, but the electoral system worked the way it was designed to work. That doesn't make it good; it just makes it not a surprise.

All your observations here are on target, but many of these problems are perennial. Faster sailing ships in the 18th and 19th century facilitated trade: People could get their stuff quicker. Sears and Roebuck and Montegomery Wards were the Amazon of their day (late 19th century going forward). You could live in Montana, get around on a horse, not have electricity, but you could mail-order all kinds of stuff from Sears out of their printed catalog and it would arrive quite quickly on the railroad--everything from women's corsets to grain harvesters. Further, you didn't have to have a credit card or even a checking account. You could send cash after you got your bill.

You are right: The market dislikes friction. That's one of the problems of viewing everything as a market -- everything from a gay bar to a university classroom.

I would suggest, in response to your very sane observation, that what we cannot speak of together, as real (non-virtual) human beings, existing in the real world, in a single time and place, we should not speak of at all. (For awhile at least; say 1,000 years or so.) It's too much, too soon. — Brian Jones

I didn't mean that we shouldn't talk if our togethereness is only virtual. It was much more of a remark on the value choices that we make how we spend our time, especially when you have close people to you who are only for a brief time dependent of you and for whom you are so important, until they grow up and start living their own independent lives.

Talking with strangers or in this case, foreigners, is a positive experience when one notices how similar people are. It would be perhaps a scary experience if one would come to such site and one would notice that you have absolutely nothing in common with the people. Your values, morals and preferences or interests would be totally different and you wouldn't understand their reasoning.

The internet is like a great cultural centrifuge, and we're hurtling outward with it. — Brian Jones

Haven't the human race been in that centrifuge for quite a while now? From the personal car to the telephone to mass media to cheap contraception, we have dramatically changed the way we live through the technological inventions we have made. The easy life perhaps makes us more lazy and short sighted, yet it's a very old way of thinking that we have lost something on the way and become decadent.

We get the answers we seek instantly, we keep up with friends without speaking to them, we get the news as it happens, we watch loops of videos an algorithm chose for us, we click once and get any product in the world delivered to our doorsteps in less than two days.

Less friction means more time spent, more ads seen, more sales made. Tech companies lose customers during login screens and security verification, and as a result of slow load times. The country’s top computer science talent is paid billions of dollars to further reduce the milliseconds of delay separating our desires and their fulfillment. — Brian Jones

As was pointed out in many responses of this thread, we cannot change the course of the internet development since it has reached the point of no return. And, as numerous previous revolutionary inventions, it brings us both advantages and disadvantages. In addition to already mentioned points, the radical novelty of the internet has also been based on the construction of the interaction interface that modeling, enforcing, sustaining, and modulating the whole complexes of human behavior. Using many sites or programs, one must ultimately follow the previously designed patterns and algorithms, interacting with and programming one’s cognitive, perceptual, and volitional reactions. Probably, these tendencies will be further augmented by the intensive AI development. Of course, we benefit from and enjoy the continually growing effectiveness, convenience, and productivity. Yet, aren’t we able to find behind the conventional interface the cybernetic and informational machines’ networks, interacting not with a particular internet user, but with a set of non-individuated intelligence, affects, sensations, cognition, and memory?