Newsweek used to be good, now it’s god-awful. Even that hack George Will quit.

The history of the introduction of new technologies shows that there is always fear and backlash. The Gartner Hype Cycle calls this the “trough of disillusionment”. The Newsweek article is merely an indication that this is where we are in terms of the development of the Internet. Hold on tight, we’re going to rock around the bottom of this trough for a while, but look forward a few years and we’ll reach the “plateau of productivity” after we have been up the “slope of enlightenment”.

What this all means is that before too long, the naysayers will be consigned to the “don’t bother contacting” list by journalists.

Back in the Age of Paper, all a magazine had to do was print good articles and people would read them.

But nowadays, the internet does that for free and even if a magazine does publish a good piece, someone will summarize it on their blog and people will read that rather than buy a whole magazine for one article.

The solution seems to be to write bad articles and put them on the front cover, then reap the free publicity from all the critics.

It won’t work though, because blogs can also do that, better than magazines can.

many years ago when i was a real hot-shot straight A undergrad in computer science – smartest of the students at my uni and held in awe by many – i worked also for a start-up that had employed a top line programmer from overseas – he was like a god.

He used to tell me about “panic attacks” and i assumed there was something wrong with him as no such thing could possibly happen to normal people.

That was then – i’ve learned since then what it is to suffer an attack of panic.

Now i have true understanding of that subject.

A lot of people think schizophrenia is a disease of the brain when there is little evidence to support that even though nobody would deny that someone suffering from the psychoses and paranoia is obviously suffering.

We all assume that psychotics have a disease that is a lifetime affliction and consequently we treat them that way and we fill them full of incredibly damaging drugs that actually make such people worse.

What if psychosis is a natural, 100% normal way for people to deal with certain life situations?

Maybe some people more readily succumb to such life situations.

It’s not the internet itself that “causes” psychosis. It’s also not the individual who is already psychotic.

It’s that certain natural behaviours of humans (eg “falling in love”, going through divorce…) that are naturally totally intense may, when carried out over the medium of writing, almost instantaneous writing, be so much more intense that the culmination may be too much for some people to handle – and so may end up flipping out.

I’ve seen people become quite psychotic when under enormous stress.

I’ve experienced myself – and mine was all wrapped up with the use of email 20 years ago when the net was in its infancy.

Back then after years of reading psych books i came to the conclusion that such use of the net could indeed lead to psychosis and i was not alone in that view – it was not uncommon for others who had had such experiences to end up in therapy and such cases were reported in the press.

It’s not the net but it is psychosis brought on while using the net, intensified by the medium.

Ignorance can lead people to do one of two things: you can either rubbish what you hear or you can look for the grain of truth

it’s the truly bright person that does the latter

most of us are the fools that do the former

pop