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hot_pastrami · 10-29-2003, 03:18 PM

I really need to NOT reply to your posts, HC... to an armchair philosopher such as myself, they are highly distracting from work. But, I must reply. I have no choice. I will be brief.

It sounds a bit like you're pondering whether the Internet has a mind, awareness, and/or sentience. I've gotta go with No. The Internet is not capable of pondering it's own existence, and to me, self-awareness is a prerequisite to sentience.

The Internet's best analogy is of a very large community. It is made up of many sentient, communicating individuals, but the community itself is not a sentient being. Salt Lake City is not a sentient being, though it may appear to behave as one if I step back and look at it from a distance, blurring it's individual parts.

You can only stretch a word's definition so far before you should acknowledge that it's not the word you're looking for. Such is the case with the word "living" here. The Internet is more than the sum of it's part due solely to the human contribution. Left to it's own devices, if the humans abandoned it, it would become a lifeless shell, just as an abandoned city would.

10-29-2003, 03:18 PM	#2
hot_pastrami I am meaty Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Salt Lake City, UT Posts: 1,119	I really need to NOT reply to your posts, HC... to an armchair philosopher such as myself, they are highly distracting from work. But, I must reply. I have no choice. I will be brief. It sounds a bit like you're pondering whether the Internet has a mind, awareness, and/or sentience. I've gotta go with No. The Internet is not capable of pondering it's own existence, and to me, self-awareness is a prerequisite to sentience. The Internet's best analogy is of a very large community. It is made up of many sentient, communicating individuals, but the community itself is not a sentient being. Salt Lake City is not a sentient being, though it may appear to behave as one if I step back and look at it from a distance, blurring it's individual parts. You can only stretch a word's definition so far before you should acknowledge that it's not the word you're looking for. Such is the case with the word "living" here. The Internet is more than the sum of it's part due solely to the human contribution. Left to it's own devices, if the humans abandoned it, it would become a lifeless shell, just as an abandoned city would. __________________ Hot Pastrami!