Internet dumbs down as much as it enlightens (Score 1)

I think it's good that people are at least looking to history as they try to grapple with the meaning of the net. I wonder sometimes if it really is 'enlightening' tho. It's so easy to use that it encourages and propagates bad writing, bad code, bad design, bad ideas, bad everything. The Enlightenment inherited better academic traditions than what we have now. Even tho there was a lot of skepticism and questioning of medieval methods, most of the philosophes were still disciplined scholars. Now anyone with an ISP can give their often worthless 2cents. And it shows.

If anything, I would say the net more closely resembles the age of the 'Struggle for Wealth and Empire' than the Enlightenment.