> Sometimes I wish that Peak Oil and the following total collapse of
> industrial civilization would rid the world of the Internet... then
> permaculture gardens, bicycles (if not even donkeys - I never had, and
> probably will have the chance to visit Afghanistan, but perhaps this way
> Afghanistan comes to us all...) would be far more important than
> programming languages, smartphones and Twitter accounts! And also
> POV-Ray...
>
Yeah, thing is, they kind of tried something like that, a few times. The 
last one they burned nearly every book they could find, including the 
ones on mechanics, architecture, medicine, etc., etc., and we are still 
finding shit in ruins that make us go, "Wow! Imagine if they hadn't had 
to hand make every gear for one of these things, instead of mass 
producing them!", today. Internet isn't the problem. Its sort of a 
free-form libertarian paradise. Which means that, when people do end up 
controlling it, on some level, what you get isn't paradise, or vast 
collections of good information, but the digital version of the novel 
Snow Crash, where everyone has gated communities, and every crazy ass 
idea there is has its own walled garden, where they all talk about how 
everyone else is crazy. The only difference is, there are no armed 
guards (technically), or robot guard dogs, so you won't get shot, 
bitten, etc., if you walk into the wrong place. You might, though, say 
something that contradicts local idiocies, and get your posts banned.

While not always a hard and fast rule, this last result is usually a 
damn good sign that everything there is pure bullshit, that different 
opinions, never mind actual facts, are considered hazardous material, 
and the people running the blog/site/service/etc. are *probably* several 
dozen bricks short of a pile of bricks, never mind a wall.

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