Optimism #4 :: Altruism on the Web

If the question was not 'What Are You Optimistic About?' but instead 'What Are You Pessimistic About' then Dan Sperber's answer would be that the progress of human wisdom is pathetically slow. In the meantime, greater technological advances have provided wealthy, powerful people  a new way to cause more and more havoc. Therefore, he doesn’t have much reason to be optimistic about the future of humanity. However, humans are unpredictable, and often have many surprises up their sleeves. Many of those surprises are helpful, which in some ways is something to be optimistic about.

A endless stream of technological, academic, artistic inventions, many of them brilliant quality, are becoming free to the public according to their needs, individuals working to the maximum of their skills. They often seek self-understanding more than notice and glory. Some examples of the types: Free-software, Wikis and the open-source software. Some examples of the individual programs: Blender, Audacity, Gimp*, Firefox and Opera. Not many people would have thought the Internet would become quite so popular.

Many free technologies need the Internet. For example: Wikis, Blogs, Open-access documents and many more. A cheaper or free product is more desirable than an expensive one. So let us applaud change, wherever it appears. Many members of the public have observed the economics is odd. He is optimistic that the development of both individual and collective forms of altruism on the Internet. The Internet is an organization of organizations. Each and every single node is a website. Many websites are colliding, and linking to each other.

On this planet, more and more altruistic acts - acts that had in the past been intended just for the persons family or clan or state - might now, out of a sensible sense of common destiny be aimed for the gain of everyone. Dan Sperber is optimistic about altruism on the Internet.

By AchillesX (9)