What's Next
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
HOYLE HODGES
INTERNET: Knowledge and Community
Response for 3 Dec 2010
What’s Next?
“Reason is and only ought to be a slave of the passions” (Hume qtd. in Graham, The Internet a Philosophical Inquiry pg 53) This is a hard chapter to write a response on, the author spends most of the chapter laying groundwork for future positions without clearly stating them. I found the most compelling parts of chapter 3 for me personally were centered around the differences between useful and valuable, and how satisfaction of desires determines this. We are then confronted with the difference between a subjective and objective definition of value and what that makes of Hume’s position of value. I feel most of society tends to believe more in Hume’s position that things are valuable because we desire them, not because I think the subjective view of value is correct, but because that is how most people look at advances in technology particularly ITC. I agree that the objective view of value is closer to being the correct view “the rationally desirable must be based on the truly valuable” (Graham, 54). Advances in ITC and the internet must be looked at in a much more objective manner by society to ensure a moral outcome for consumers. Just because the latest whiz bang gadget provides a new capability does not mean it is valuable to society in and of itself. We need to take a hard look at any new capability and try to determine the unforeseen consequences of the technology and what type of societal controls can be put in place to limit negative side effects. An example would be Parental Controls over web site access now commonly used to prevent children from accessing harmful sites. These were not always available in the early days of the Internet, but were forced on service providers and developers by public outrage, media, and market forces.
