The Second Enlightenment is Over 

Did you miss it? The Internet Enlightenment? During the 
first enlightenment they wrote the encyclopedia, 
constitution and read just about every book they could 
get their hands on. This was the late seventeen 
hundreds and books were rare enough to be cool. People 
read, voraciously. They were smart.

The second enlightenment happened in the 1990's and 
early oughts (00). People discovered the Internet. The 
generation coming of age then made a stupendous 
discovery; they had a love of information. Information 
was consumed at a pace never before seen. These people 
are smart and were motivated to be so. But now the 
Internet has turned into television. Instead of 
reading, everybody's watching vids.

We've all seen the effect TV has on the intelligence of 
a population. It's effects may not be fully known for 
decades, but it has some horrific results. The media 
has torn apart social values and created a self 
centered economy never before seen in the history of 
human kind.

Now we have a short reprieve, the Internet generation. 
But is it over? Has the Internet generation, the 
generation motivated by intelligence, come and gone?

Recently I took advantage of the digital conversion to 
get rid of my TV. I knew I had discovered better 
viewing on the Internet anyway. I could set my own 
programming and it was extremely engaging. What I 
overlooked was that every night, at exactly the same 
time, I switched my daily activities over to watching 
my shows on the Internet (Hulu and You Tube). Nothing 
had changed. I was watching TV again, except now it was 
even better because I could select the programming I 
wanted and I craved it even more than television.

I decided to do something radical. I needed to learn 
lots of programming, which can consume every waking 
minute, so I discontinued by DSL. I'm back on the 
modem. If I want to watch something I have to wait for 
it to download. Once again now my evenings are used for 
learning new programming techniques.

My experience is just an example. I've noticed a lot of 
brilliant people, with a lot of new and creative ideas, 
who have emerged from the Internet generation. I hope 
we can figure out a way to continue this second 
enlightenment, that's not as radical as unplugging your 
TV and DSL.

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