Monday, February 20, 2006
Some people thought I was just blowing steam in the last post... jerk who likes finding faults with other people... who died and made him the great-know-it-all-.... whatever...
But I assure you there is more to it than that.
Now I may have mentioned this to you before. I mention this pretty often. But there is this theory that fascinates me.
It goes like this.
Evolution happens in small groups. That's how it's always worked. Small groups of organisms fight to survive in an otherwise hostile environment and they have to suddenly get smarter or die. See evolution is not really about growing a long neck or suddenly standing up. Evolution is almost always about getting smarter. It's about RECOGNISING the need to grow a longer neck. RECOGNISING the need to stand up. The evolution of an organism is almost always the evolution of its intelligence.
Now coming back to the small groups. Now this is a fact. There is good evidence to support this and if you think about it, it'll make sense to you too. But without the mumbo-jumbo the fact of life is this. Evolution works best in small to mid sized, isolated groups. You put 50 squirrels on an island, they evolve about twice as fast as the island next door with 5000 squirrels. 50 squirrels have to work harder to survive. That's stimulus. Each individual squirrel experiences this stimulus and responds to it. Thus becoming smarter. Thus evolving.
However, on the island with 5000 squirrels, the stimulus is dissipated. Maybe about 50 squirrels at any time to do anything creative, and other squirrels just sort of copy them. So the squirrels still survive obviously, but they are not stimulated. As a result they don't get smarter. They don't evolve.
Now we were just talking about 50 and 5000 squirrels on an islands. What if we put 5 BILLION in one place? Well, in that case evolution virtually stops. It's a fact.
But then that's exactly what the internet does, doesn't it? It puts us all, the billions of squirrels on one giant island, just arms length from each other. And I wonder what that means to us in terms of intelligence, and evolution. Not that it matters, coz we will all be dead far before we can observe any of the effects. This kind of evolution takes thousands of years. But sometimes, I see things that make me think... yup... this is happening... right now. Think about it. If you spend maybe a dull afternoon following one blog from each other... don't you get this overwhelming sense that you are reading the same thing over and over again? That's what I was trying to point out. The tremendous sense of deja vu about blogs..... and pretty much most things on the internet. Somehow, sometimes every blog looks like, reads alike. Same kind of people, writing about the same kind of things, discussing the same kind of music, using the same template. Now don't get me wrong... I'm not saying EVERY single person has to come up with a work of art for every post. No... originality, and creativity is NOT equatable to ART. Art, poetry, literature are indeed extensions of originality... but what I am talking about is the originality of THOUGHT, that exists in every person... or should exist. But if you go blog hopping... you don't see that very often. People are much happier to just sort of BORROW other people's original thoughts and try to put some kind of a spin on it. That's why you get 2635 (is that right J.A.P?) reviews of RDB. Not anything else... people could have easily reviewed Brokeback mountain or Munich or Capote... but no... it was RDB because we are 5 billion squirrels on one island. People do things just because they see other people do it. Have you ever noticed the speed at which a thought flies across the internet. Like people telling jokes they read in forwards. They are not the best jokes... but they are easy.... coz you don't have to think that way. You need some kind of an idea, for anything, be it blogging or nuclear fission reactors, you don't bother to come up with one on your own. You just see what other people around you are doing and basically do a bit of this and a bit of that mixed with probably a dash of your own spirit. And you put it out as originality. And that's the problem. We are just too lazy to be original in thought. I mean the evidence of this all over. TV, movies, music, art, science... you have to have seen it.
Think about it. Google might just be making you dumber.
I know I know. I'm sorry. It's really hot. I've had a couple of beers. First day of university. Was up till 3 AM last night. Had BRUNCH. I'm rambling... forgive me
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1:43 AM
