In a more cynical and depressing vein, you are expressing some of the same concepts my Father published over a half-century ago. You see, I’ve been “researching on the internet” ever since there was an internet, and before it was called by that name.

My Father, Dr. Harold Sackman, was a researcher for the RAND Corporation and its spinoff, SDC. His specialty was what was then known as “Man-Machine Interface.” What is now known as the “world-wide-web” he called the “Mass Information Utility.” The very name embodies his perhaps-naïve hope for this emerging technology.

In his first book – Computers, System Science and Evolving Society: The Challenge of Man-Machine Digital Systems (John Wiley & Sons 1967), he warned that “The long-term impact of computer-aided intelligence on social behavior will be so massive and profound that it should be unequivocally aimed at global and universal ends at the outset. Posterity will judge our concerns for universalizing the social benefits of computers, a concern that we neglect at our own peril.”

Your article pronounces that judgment – and we have been found wanting.

To my Father, the guiding light to a better world was the “experimental method” touted by his prophet – the philosopher John Dewey. “Is the emergence of public information utilities the instrumentality through which Dewey’s dream can be realized?” my Father later asked in Mass Information Utilities and Social Excellence (Auerbach 1971).

Despite current evidence to the contrary, I hold out hope that the dream of Dewey and my Father can still be realized. The key, I believe, is spreading the skills of critical thinking and experimental method. “Experimental method is a universal human legacy, too important and vital for human welfare to be left to the scientists” my Father wrote. That is why I am here on Medium – looking for intelligent and critical exchanges of ideas.