On the Internet

by Hubert L. Dreyfus

Book Overview

Can the internet solve the problem of mass education, and bring human beings to a new level of community? Drawing on a diverse array of thinkers from Plato to Kierkegaard, On the Internet argues that... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415228077
• ISBN13: 9780415228077
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A probing and valuable study

In this book, Hubert Dreyfus presents a philosophical study of how the Internet experientially impacts our lives. His approach appropriately draws mainly on phenomenology and existentialism, so you'll encounter names like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Merleau-Ponty. The book is short and fairly easy to follow, especially if you have some background in Western philosophy. In reading the book, I found that Dreyfus pretty much articulates views I had already formed on my own many years ago, so of course I agree with him and I like the book. Here are the main points: * The Internet exemplifies technology in terms of its flexibility, and the more extreme Internet enthusiasts (wrongly) claim that it will eventually enable us to transcend our bodies. By contrast, Nietzsche argued for transcending our human limitations by using the emotional and intuitive capacities of our bodies. * The hyperlinked informational structure of the Internet resists hierarchy and flattens everything to one level, thus obscuring qualitative differences and meanings relevant to the needs and interests of particular individuals. * The Internet has value in education and supports distance learning, but only to the level of developing rudimentary competence. Development of real expertise generally requires the emotional involvement and richness of experience that comes from live face-to-face interaction between student and teacher. * To avoid becoming detached spectators of life, we need to instead be embodied involved agents in the world, facing the possibilities of surprise and real risk. This involvement is what enables us to maintain a grip on reality, develop trust in others, and gain the context needed to function skillfully in diverse situations. Moreover, surveys indicate that people tend to feel more isolated and depressed as they use the Internet more, so psychological wellness is also at stake. * The Internet fosters a situation in which anyone can express an opinion on anything, without having real expertise, genuine commitment, or tangible consequences. This can lead to trivialization, superficiality, and corresponding hazards, but it's still possible for people who are already knowledgeable and serious to use the Internet in ways that are more beneficial than harmful. * The upshot of all this is that the Internet is a powerful but limited tool. To benefit from it, we need to control it and our use of it, rather than falling prey to it controlling us. This requires that we focus on our embodied existence, with all the pleasures and sufferings that entails, rather than naively fantasizing that we can meaningfully live in some sort of escapist cyberspace. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reflecting on how the Internet can impact our lived experience. And I especially recommend this book to people who spend too much time in front of the computer, rather than interacting with real live people, nature, and the rest of the real world.

Very interesting, provocative, little book

Dreyfus is a Heidegger scholar who is also known for his books explaining "why computers can't think." This short (it can be read in an evening), provocative book discusses some of the problems of reliance on the Internet as a source of information and an educational forum, in a way that is interestingly informed by Dreyfus's study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. I highly recommend this book both to students of Continental philosophy (the author's use of Kierkegaard to argue against Habermas's notion of the "public sphere" as the locus of a meaningfully participatory democracy is especially provocative) and to anyone who has ever wondered whether the Internet really is making our lives better. Dreyfus explains why and how it may not be.

The attraction and dangers of Internet Platonism

The Internet Book raises the following questions: Can we leave our vulnerable bodies while preserving relevance, learning, reality, and meaning? The latest book of Hubert Dreyfus will examine in complete details the various perspectives -of the Net through the eyes of a Philosopher -the attraction of life on the Internet as a way of achieving Plato's dream of overcoming space and time as well as bodily finitude (as Plato said Learning takes place independent of Time and Space in Mind). Drawing on philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus discussed and seriously criticised the Net. In his criticism, he explained -that, in spite of its attraction, the more one lives one's life through the Net the more loses a sense of what is relevant, and so faces the problem of finding the information one is seeking. Also, in spite of economic attraction of distance learning, such learning by substituting telepresence for real presence (how much presence is delivered by the telepresence?), leaves no place for risk-taking an apprenticeship which plays a crucial role in all types of skill acquisition. Furthermore, without a sense of bodily vulnerability, one looses a sense of reality of the physical world and one's sense that one can trust other people. Finally, he discussed while the anonymity of the Net makes possible experimentation, the overall effect of the NET is to undermine commitment (what Kierkegaard spelled out in The Present Age) thus to deprive life of any serious meaning. In the above book-the author tried to give answers in greater depth to the questions, which is important in field of humanities and Philosophy -that why reach beyond ourselves and our humanity? Why seek to become posthuman? Why not accept our human limits and renounce transcendence?In my view, the book On the Internet discussed in greater depth the important question How does the Dreyfus's Skill developmental model and his non-representational learning relate to the Internet-facilitated education!The book is divided into four chapters:Chapter 1. Hyperlinks -In this chapter The hype about hyper-links Professor Dreyfus discussed the hope for intelligent information retrieval and the failure of AI. He raised one good question, how the actual shape and movement of our bodies plays a crucial role in grounding meaning so that loss of embodiment leads to loss of relevance.Chapter 2. Distance-Learning -In this chapter, How far is Distance Learning from Education? Hubert Dreyfus discussed the importance of mattering and attunement for teaching and learning skills and phenomenology of skill acquisition. Apprenticeship and the need for imitation. Without involvement and presence -he said we cannot acquire skills.Chapter 3. Telepresence -The chapter, Disembodied Telepresence and the remoteness of the Real will let us know about -the body as source of our presence of causal embedding and attunement to mood. Hubert Dreyfus has raised a

The attraction and dangers of Internet Platonism

The Internet Book raises the following questions: Can we leave our vulnerable bodies while preserving relevance, learning, reality, and meaning? The latest book of Hubert Dreyfus examines in complete details the various perspectives -of the Net through the eyes of a Philosopher -the attraction of life on the Internet as a way of achieving Plato's dream of overcoming space and time as well as bodily finitude. Drawing on philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus discussed and seriously criticised the Net. In his criticism in the book, he explaines -that, in spite of its attraction, the more one lives one's life through the Net the more loses a sense of what is relevant, and so faces the problem of finding the information one is seeking. Also, in spite of economic attraction of distance learning, such learning by substituting telepresence for real presence (how much presence is delivered by the telepresence?), leaves no place for risk-taking an apprenticeship which plays a crucial role in all types of skill acquisition. Furthermore, without a sense of bodily vulnerability, one looses a sense of reality of the physical world and one's sense that one can trust other people. Finally, he discusses while the anonymity of the Net makes possible experimentation, the overall effect of the NET is to undermine commitment (what Kierkegaard spelled out in The Present Age) thus to deprive life of any serious meaning. This fascinating discovery shows that the Internet has profound and unexpected effects. Presumably, it affects people in ways that are different than the way most tools do because it can become the main way someone relates to the rest of the world. Given the surprises and disappointments through the Net, Hubert Dreyfus explores the question, what are the benefits and the dangers of living our lives on line? In the Internet book-the author tried to give answers in greater depth to the questions, which is important in field of humanities and Philosophy -that why reach beyond ourselves and our humanity? Why seek to become posthuman? Why not accept our human limits and renounce transcendence?In my view, the book On the Internet discusses in greater depth the important question How does the Dreyfus's Skill developmental model and his non-representational learning relate to the Internet-facilitated education!The book is divided into four chapters:Chapter 1. Hyperlinks -In this chapter The hype about hyper-links Professor Dreyfus discusses the hope for intelligent information retrieval and the failure of AI. He raises one good question, how the actual shape and movement of our bodies plays a crucial role in grounding meaning so that loss of embodiment leads to loss of relevance.Chapter 2. Distance-Learning -In this chapter, How far is Distance Learning from Education? Hubert Dreyfus discusses the importance of mattering and attunement for teaching and learning skills and phenomenology of skil