Hyper-clicking

According to a study made by James A. Evans, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, today scientists and scholars tend to search electronically and follow hyperlinks rather than browse or peruse.

Traditionally the forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Today however searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon.

These remarks show just one unpleasant aspect of a pandemic induced by overuse of hyperlinks, what I call hyper-clicking. We are simply lured by the power of hyperlinks, inclined to follow them wherever we see them without in depth questioning.

Even scarier the path we follow from one hyperlink to another is statistically the most probable one, the links we are exposed to are simply the most popular ones. Hyper-clicking often acts like a double-edged sword, not only we rapidly diverge from our original intent, we also converge to a direction not dictated by our freewill but by popular opinion.

Hyper-clicking narrows down options rather than multiplying them, our intention of finding answers is channeled into popular choice. We become a zombie like victim of populist ignorance. Misused this way the Internet becomes nothing more than a giant billboard on which the choices are narrowed down by popular demand and alternative thoughts are hidden somewhere like fine prints no one wants to read.

To combat hyper-clicking I suggest:

• First and foremost learn to slow down. Get back into the habit of "read more, follow less". Finish the article you started reading. Imagine yourself in a long train journey and you have no choice. Rediscover the wisdom in boredom.
• Question objectivity of content providers before blindly following the links offered by them. Ask yourself about their original intention, the reliability of information they provide, and their syndicates.
• From time to time refine your favourite site list, remove the sites you think offer less or no value for you.
• Beware of RSS-entropy, regularly clean up RSS feeds you no longer benefit from.
• Use more than one search engine (examples: Google, Bing, and Wolfram).

Embrace the change in you

In a 1982 interview, Foucault remarked "When people say, 'Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else,' my answer is… 'Well, do you think I have worked hard all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?'" He refused to identify himself as a philosopher, historian, structuralist, or Marxist, maintaining that

"The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning."

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy categorises integrity as follows:

1. integrity as the integration of self
2. integrity as maintenance of identity
3. integrity as standing for something
4. integrity as moral purpose
5. integrity as a virtue.

In the light of Foucault's remarks I came to think that we should question the usefulness of maintaining integrity without reason.

Mobile

Every time my mobile phone can no longer be charged, I end up "upgrading" to the next worse model. Mobile phone manufacturers do their best to drive me crazy. I know I would end up with an over-designed junk, a hyper-loaded teenage toy, which would be far worse than the previous model.

Is this too impossible?

A low cost two-color touch screen with scroll function, a translator to translate numbers to names (I don't care how this can be achieved, but I am sure one day human race will get rid of alphabetical non-sense on keys), a simple keypad with just numbers (like an old phone), a simple three line screen with names, an OK button to select or lock/sleep when pressed long enough. The machine will remember the last person talked and positions the cursor to that when wakes up.