Have computers and the internet revolutionized the world as much

>>55705886

id say even more, internet has infected every faucet of life. Data travels at the speed of light now. It shrunk the world smaller then a car ever could.

Speaking at a physical level you could compare the two.

Automobiles greatly sped the transfer of aggregate energy between actors which allowed for larger structures than ever before. In this case the money would flow inversely as energy in the opposite direction. Really it was a simple and predictable change, yet effective.

The internet had no such direct on these hierarchies immediately. Instead it acted as an agitator to induce change via the spread of information. This spread in my opinion has the ability to facilitate much more change for a couple of reasons: first the amount of money required is not proportional to the amount of information retrieved. Someone at a free public library could access the same information (generally) as a billionaire. Second, this spread is faster because the information resources are available to all immediately upon creation.

One could argue that the Internet could not have occurred without the advent of the automobile but that is inconsequential.

Obviously this sort of analysis is too complicated to perfect for a 4chan post but I think I can plainly say that the Internet is more important at a higher level of abstraction while automobiles are much more important at a lower level of abstraction.

>>55705886

That's some dense ice

>>55706145

I'm not sure I'd agree with you vis-a-vis information "equality"... while a library user can access the sane webpage as a billionare, they can't access massive datasets, or have super low latency connections, both important factors in (for example) market trading; id est, the rich have a material advantage over the poor (especially in developing nations).

Compared with the automobile: it gave everyone cheap and easy transportation. Sure, Bentley's go faster, but that doesn't make a huge difference to the average commuter.

You might argue that the average internet user doesn't need such advanced capabilities either; but you're probably taking (for example) the ability to stream HD video for granted. That could improve the lives of people wanting to take edX courses on a shitty sat-link in the bush in Africa.

(As a codicil: there was an interesting piece on the World Service about how capital is bunching up around the parts of LEDCs that already have infrastucture; one woman moved her business to such a city purely to have a faster connection. If automobiles distributed wealth, the internet seems to compound it.)

>>55706316
Yes you are correct. To your first point that is why I added (generally).

I did not consider HD streaming of courses but instead thought of downloading texts etc. This is also a good point since infrastructure relating to the internet is a massive consideration to take in when speaking in terms of resource transfer. Again, too lazy to write up anything too complex and also on mobile now.

>the internet seems to compound it
I see this as a byproduct of preexistant networks of actors, but the effect we see is as you stated it.

By the way I am just a CS major and not particularly well read. Just obsessed with "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History"-esque world viewing recently.

I think the very rich wall off information and that information is the most valuable thing of all. Yeah you can read anyone's blog or 4chan but you can't get the kind of information that the rich spend all their time encrypting.

you and mark zuckerberg might get caught in the same traffic jam but you don't have the info and power to market garbage to idiots that he does and that has made him rich

>>55706145
This is shit