The world is ruled through literature

I heard that's not true.

The internet has changed a lot of that. Now, we're sort of trending towards hacking knowledge.

Before, specific fields of knowledge were accepted by governments who created specialties and licenses, all ways for the state to control commerce.

That created demand for universities to pump out degrees related to those specialties created by government regulation. The internet short circuits all of that. A creative person can imagine learning pieces from all sorts of fields and combining them into a new application, or product, or experiment.

So, the idea of hacking isn't necessarily a bad thing, or perhaps it's been given a bad connotation to discourage alternative thinking and learning.

But this is the threshold, where either the government restricts information on the internet to certain classes of people, or whether we are willing to let go of all our old paradigms and begin using the accumulated knowledge of mankind as building blocks for the future.

There's this amazing thing called observation, OP. No literature required. However, I understand what you're getting at.

Certainly used to be true that peoples minds were formed by the books they read and hence by the people that owned the publishing houses, book stores, awards committees, set the academic curricula etc etc.

But then they lost control a bit with the internet - so I guess that's why they are planning to censor out all the internet 'hate speech' now.

The world was ruled through literature, then came TV and Radio to join the club as more powerful a tool against all classes.

As AC above mentions, we are now in an era where knowledge and ideas are shared and consumed cross-border on a schedule and agenda determined by the individual.

Clearly this makes the internet the next battleground for your heart and mind, as it is a threat to those used to controlling the programming and content.

I can imagine a future where people are happy to give up their free speech voluntarily.

New words and labels will arrive in the mainstream to describe people causing offence to certain groups of society. New 'isms'.

International laws will be introduced to extinguish 'undesirable' views and ideas under the guise of offence and 'radicalisation'.

So yes,those not silenced with guns can be silenced with law and words, old or new.

Your last point resonates - hearsay will win the day over actual fact. Probably more so now than ever before.

Last Edited by Distant Echo on 08/30/2016 03:32 AM

The world is ruled through energies, frequencies, vibrations, and knowledge of the laws of nature

the world is ruled by ignorant idiots