Only a few hours after reading Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes in which Susan Blackmore describes us as biological machines which copy from one brain to another ultimately effecting our cognitive evolution, I heard someone mention common sense.It’s been a dream of mine for sometime to write a thesis on common sense. I believe it is a complex and dangerous concept. Common sense itself literally means that an idea about something is a widely held notion. (or is it something your either born with or not???) What is problematic, is that in its use it heavily implies truth and stupidity…

Isabel Allende has said that good people with common sense don’t make interesting characters, only good ex-spouses. (see below) As she describes her characters as passionate, courageous adventurers I am drawn to recall another article related to the TED 2008 conference by Proffessor Zimbardo:

“To be a hero you have to take action on behalf of someone else or some principle and you have to be deviant in your society, because the group is always saying don’t do it; don’t step out of line. If you’re an accountant at Arthur Andersen, everyone who is doing the defrauding is telling you, “Hey, be one of the team.”

“Heroes have to always, at the heroic decisive moment, break from the crowd and do something different. But a heroic act involves a risk. If you’re a whistle-blower you’re going to get fired, you’re not going to get promoted, you’re going to get ostracized. And you have to say it doesn’t matter. “ – Philip Zimbardo, famous for the Stamford Prison experiment speaking of the Abu Ghraib incident to Wired Feb 08

A topic I’m passionate about… Google. Or rather search dominance.

The Times:
White bread for young minds, says university professor

Google is “white bread for the mind”, and the internet is producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim this week.

My comment:

Article just started to get interesting when it ended there. Media literacy… interpretive skills – absolutely! Duh!
Could fundamentals in basic education really be so lacking? Media literacy is an incredibly important research skill and life skill as it always was – before the web, as it will be after the web. In an ideal world Google would be a great tool that revealed how many points of view there are out there, how rich perspectives and opinions and how diverse facts can be.

My main beef would be that Google (rather online search) should be a feast of delicacies rather than the meat & potatoes it serves up. It’s hard to penetrate a search result beneath big business. Google is a commercial solution to search and a market dominator. As a commercial solution they have sought to protect the algorithm (and their market position) and have created a field of specialist knowledge along with it. Far from democratic, search results are elite. Search results support the dominate view.

Scott Berkun – Is Google White Bread for Young Minds?

See what Scott had to say on the issue – he’s a great thinker. I keep track of his blog & was referred to the times article from there… spot my comment. (similar to above… )

It doesn’t surprise me that audience consumption & the direction of / role that media plays in democracy makes a key point in Al Gore’s Assault on Reason. It seems as though Al’s personal accounts of the effect of media on democracy will deliver impact. Interestingly, Al appears to favor interactive media for its ability to provide platforms for participation and makes calls for the www to remain open.

Calling for an open web – I wonder what Al thinks of Google & if he in fact uses it at all.

 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622015,00.html