The Internet of Us

1. The Internet is Revolutionizing Knowledge, But Not Always for the Better

Greater knowledge doesn’t always bring with it greater understanding.

Double-edged sword. The internet provides unprecedented access to information, making knowledge acquisition faster and easier than ever before. However, this ease of access can also lead to over-reliance on digital sources and a decline in other, more complex ways of knowing. The speed and convenience of "Google-knowing" can overshadow the importance of critical thinking, personal experience, and creative reasoning.

Seamless integration. The integration of digital experiences into our lives is so seamless that it's becoming ordinary, leading to a "digital form of life." This seamlessness can make it difficult to recognize how the internet is changing our minds and lives. We are adapting to life in the infosphere, but that doesn't mean we understand it or how it's changing us.

Need for reflection. Acceptance without reflection is dangerous. While the internet has expanded access to knowledge, it's also crucial to measure and assess its depth and direction. We must pay attention to how the internet is changing us before it becomes settled in its course, something we take for granted as part of the natural landscape.

2. Knowing Isn't Just About Having Information; It's About Understanding

Knowledge, as Sir Francis Bacon said, is power.

Data vs. Information vs. Knowledge. Data is raw and unorganized, information is data that has been filtered and made meaningful, and knowledge is justified, true belief that guides action. Not all information is good information, and information alone doesn't amount to knowledge. We want the right or true information, but we also want something more.

Beyond accurate information. Having accurate information isn't enough to know. Making a lucky guess isn't the same as knowing. The lucky guesser doesn't have any ground or justification for his opinion, and as a result, he is not a reliable source of information on that topic.

Understanding is key. Understanding incorporates other ways of knowing but goes farther. It is what people do when they are not only responsive to the evidence, they have creative insight into how that evidence hangs together, into the explanation of the facts, not just the facts themselves. Understanding is what we have when we know not only the “what” but the “why.”

3. The Internet Can Fragment Reason and Undermine Shared Standards of Evidence

The real worry is not, as Popper feared, that an open digital society makes us into independent individuals living Robinson Crusoe–like on smartphone islands; the real worry is that the Internet is increasing “group polarization”—that we are becoming increasingly isolated tribes.

Echo chambers. The internet allows us to easily select and choose sources that validate our existing opinions, causing disagreements to spiral ever deeper. This can lead to a fragmentation of not only moral and religious values but also our very standards of reason.

Erosion of shared principles. When debates reach a point where the very idea of "fact-checking" is seen as suspect, it becomes difficult to resolve disagreements. This can lead to a situation where tribes within the internet evaluate one another's reasons by completely different standards.

Need for common ground. Civil societies need a common currency to exchange reasons. If we don't agree on what counts as evidence, on our epistemic principles, then we aren't playing by the same rules anymore. Civil society requires that we treat one another with respect.

4. Truth and Objectivity Are Under Assault in the Digital Age

If the real is virtual, then how important can truth be?

Blurring the lines. The internet is a constructed world, making it harder to distinguish between what is real and what is subjective. The division between "onlife" and "offlife" is increasingly difficult to make out, and literal artifacts and social artifacts are being created in a feedback loop.

Social constructs. Our digital form of life is changing even our identities and how we shape them. Our identities in the psychological sense involve a number of factors, including an “integrated system of past and present identifications, desires, commitments, aspirations, beliefs, dispositions, temperamental traits, roles, acts, and actional patterns."

Importance of objectivity. Even if the digital world in which we live is constructed, we shouldn't think that all truth is constructed. Give up that thought, and we undermine our ability to engage in social criticism: to think beyond the consensus, to see what is really there. Truths are objective when what makes them true isn’t just up to us, when they aren’t constructed.

5. Privacy Is Essential for Autonomy and Personhood

We are, said, opening our mouths to government invasion and tyranny.

The Panopticon. The internet has created a digital panopticon, where our lives are increasingly transparent and subject to surveillance. This increased transparency can have a negative impact on individual freedom and autonomy.

Control and protection. Information privacy is linked to autonomy, and thereby an important feature of personhood itself. We value protecting and controlling our information because it is a necessary condition for being in a position to make autonomous decisions.

Systematic collection. The systemic nature of privacy invasions is a major concern. When private data is systematically collected, it can undermine our capacity to control how and what information we share with others. This can lead to a loss of dignity and a diminished sense of self.

6. Networks Can Embody Knowledge, But Individuals Still Matter

In a networked world, knowledge lives not in books or in heads but in the network itself.

Extended minds. Our cognitive processes are increasingly entangled with those of other people. We share minds when I consult your memory and you consult mine.

Wisdom of crowds. Networks can generate knowledge, in the sense that the aggregating of individual opinions can give us information, and possibly accurate, reliable information, that no one individual could. However, groups do better than individuals only under certain conditions.

Importance of individuals. Whether or not a network "knows" something depends on the cognitive capacities of the individuals that make it up. Our community, our network, is only as smart as its standards for evidence allow. The growing networked nature of knowledge makes the independent thinker more, not less, important than ever before.

7. The Internet Can Exacerbate Epistemic Inequality

The Internet, it is often said, is democratizing knowledge.

Democratization of knowledge. The internet has made bodies of knowledge more widely available, made its production more inclusive, and made what is known more transparent. However, these changes aren't necessarily leading to more democratic ways of organizing our information society.

Epistemic inequality. Epistemic inequality is the result of an unfair distribution of structural epistemic resources. This can occur due to poverty, closed politics, or a lack of net neutrality.

Need for open access. We need to shift the geography of reason. We need to privilege “scientific” epistemic principles and methods of thinking in public discourse precisely because such principles allow us to evaluate authority.

8. Understanding Requires Creativity, Experience, and Discernment

Understanding is what we have when we know not only the “what” but the “why.”

Beyond correlation. Understanding involves grasping relationships—the network, or parts and whole. But crucially, the relationships you grasp when you understand something aren’t just correlations. To truly understand, you also need to know what depends on what.

The power of explanation. Understanding is the kind of knowledge you need in order to be able to give a good explanation of something. Good explanations are fecund. They don’t just tell us what is; they lead us to what might be: they suggest further tests, further views, and they rule out certain hypotheses as well.

Creativity and experience. Understanding is a creative act that requires experience. To truly understand some things, you need to develop a skill; and skills require experience. We need to interact with the world outside our head to do that.

Last updated: February 19, 2025