How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?

I've heard a very interesting broadcasting on the French radio "France culture" dealing with internet media. It is questioning the internet as a new way of thinking and making, and finally, this is totally related to the project that we are involved in. The virtual school where people share and spread emulation, etc.

For French speaking people, here is the link : Place de la toile, Ce qu'internet change à notre façon de penser (what internet changes in our way of thinking).
For English speaking people, they can check the "question of the year" of the magazine EDGE, acompilation of contributions from more than one hundred people on the question : How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think? Among the contributors there are scientists, artists, etc, who all relate their intimate relation with this new media. You can find answers by Jonas Mekas(1), Hans Ulrich Obrist or Brian Eno...

1.
JONAS MEKAS
Film-Maker, Critic; Co-founder, Film-Makers' Cooperative, Filmmaker’s Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archives

I AM NOT EXACTLY A THINKING PERSON — I AM A POET

I am a farmer boy. When I grew up, there was only one radio in our entire village of twenty families. And, of course, no TV, no telephone and no electricity. I saw my first movie when I was fourteen.

In New York, in 1949, I fell in love with cinema. In 1989 I switched to video. In 2003 I embraced computer/Internet technologies.

I am telling you this to indicate that my thinking is now only entering the Internet Nation. It's still in its infancy, I am not really thinking yet Internet way — I am only babbling.

But I can tell you that it has already affected the content, form and the working procedures of everything that I do. It's entering my mind secretly, indirectly.

In 2007 I did a project, 365 Day Project. I put on Internet one short film every day. In cinema, when I was making my films, it was very abstract. I could not think about the audience. I knew the film will be placed in a film distribution center and eventually someone will look at it. Now, in my 365 Day Project I knew that later, same day, I will put it on Internet and within minutes it will be seen by all my friends, and strangers too, all over the world. So that I felt like I was conversing with them. It's intimate. It's poetic. I am not thinking anymore about problems of distribution. I am just exchanging my work with some friends. Like being part of a family. I like that. It makes for a different state of mind. If a state of mind has anything or nothing to do with thinking, that's unimportant to me. I am not exactly a thinking person. I am a poet.

I would like to add one more note to what the Internet has done to me. And that is, I began paying more attention to everything that the Internet seems to be eliminating.Books especially. But also nature. In short: the more it all expands into the virtual reality the more I feel a need to love and protect the actual reality. Not because of sentimental reasons, no. I do that from a very real, practical , almost a survival need: from my knowledge that I would lose a very essential part of myself by losing the actual reality, both cultural and physical.