Danger and Hope in the Information Age :: Philosophy Religion Essays

Danger and Hope in the Information AgeWhere can we find hope in todays randomness age? To answer thisquestion satisfactorily one must be clear as to its presupposition. To find hopein the information society sum that there appears to be something wrongwith it, so that one needs to search for hope in such a society. In this paper Iwould resembling to outline some of the perils of todays information society and topoint out that, though the perils are real and very strong, we nonetheless canovercome them through plan action which I shall outline in the sectionsto follow. In short, I would like to show that there is a realistic, practicablehope in todays information society, but such a hope can n constantly come into fruitwithout effort. Hope does not come through a substance negation of the technology,nor does it come through a blind adherence to it. Rather realistic hope canobtain only through concerted effort to encounter the implications andimpact of the technology. As for the cultures of the Third Word, where thepotential dangers of the technology appear grave, hope can come throughstrengthening of local resources and searches for ways to co-opt the technologyand to adapt it into the cultures particular life-world.Human society is increasingly characterized by an increasinglypervasive use of technologies, notably among which are the information andcommunication technologies (ICTs). Today in Bangkok one could hardly failto be giant billboards exhorting commuters to log on the Internet and visit oneweb site or another. call down cards increasingly carry email addresses as well aspersonal web sites. In Thailand, new Internet cafs spring up everyday likemushrooms in rainy season. Nowadays it is estimated that there are aroundfour million people on the Internet in the country, up from just one or twomillion just a few months ago. These solutions and numbers are just superficialindicators of a deep multifariousness that is going on throughout the world.Tec hnologies are obviously becoming more and more important, or atleast they are becoming ubiquitous. Since there is no time in human historythat this kind of profound pervasiveness of technologies, especially thoseconnected with information and communication, occurs, human beings needto reflect and think hard near what kind of life, what kind of society we as aspecies are creating. This thinking calls for a bold vision and an imaginativeconstruction of possible scenarios more than ever before, since the situationwe are facing is totally new and we cannot rely solely on lessons of the past.We cannot just compare the current situation to a historical event in order to