[sciborg2]

Are species like ours, largely - for now at least - "condemned" to communicate through intermediaries like TV/Internet/Radio/etc destined to crash against the hard cliff face of technologies incompatibility with our evolved "sensorium"?

To expand:

- We evolved not to solve scientific mysteries nor to figure out the balance between the individual & society, but at the least the latter is necessary for us to move forward as a species.

- Many of our cognitive biases are due to issues we have with meta-cognition, yet short term success favors exploitation of such biases.

- Our fear/combat responses seem to be more and more easily triggered, as is our "ability" to talk past each other.

- Social Media seems to exacerbate the problem, and thus the Internet isn't necessarily a boon over the long term.

However, I wonder if the problems we face in communicating with each other have to do with the boundaries of our subjective experience. Perhaps species that communicate via spores or some symbiote could better manage the issues that face our planet, in that they can exchange their first-person views? Or would they have even made it this far - perhaps that kind of direct communication is where madness lies?

[H]

I think it was Bakker, who in a blog post, was discussing how communicating via the Internet, we really lose a great deal of sensory information we would have and use in person.  Things like visual and auditory cues and clues, that facilitate our understanding of what the other person is saying and trying to say.  So, at least in that sense, minimally, the Internet is actually a very big filter, because now we can communicate, easily, but without any of those "extra" methods of informational exchange.  This is both a blessing and a curse, really.  It's pretty known, generally, that people will write, or type, things they'd never actually say out loud, let alone, to another person.  So, in that case, the Internet can be something that diminishes the level of discourse.

By the same token though, it can elevate as well.  Likely, none of us would have time to discuss everything we do here in person.  So, there is an element of connection that can elevate discourse.  The key is that you will get out what you put in.  If all you put in is negative, projected ideas, that is all you are going to get out.  So, in reality, the Internet is probably the biggest and grandest psychological mirror we've ever, technologically, made.

[Wilshire]

By the same token though, it can elevate as well.  Likely, none of us would have time to discuss everything we do here in person.  So, there is an element of connection that can elevate discourse.  The key is that you will get out what you put in.  If all you put in is negative, projected ideas, that is all you are going to get out.  So, in reality, the Internet is probably the biggest and grandest psychological mirror we've ever, technologically, made.

Thanks for pointing this out. We lose a lot of information, but gain something too, and most people don't talk about that aspect of it.
As you point out, this forum a shinning example. Communication is difficult, real-time communication might just be sensory overload. Filtering it all down to words and taking orders of magnitude more time to write, read, and respond, might actually facilitate more understanding, not less. Granted, just like IRL, one has to come to the plate with generous intentions, but I don't know if this effect online is anything beyond what happens in life.

Examining less information more deeply, rather than more information shallowly. All the subconscious brainpower used to interpret things like body language, tone, etc., can just as easily be mislead as our minds interpreting language. 

Information density does not demand increased understanding, and it could be that communication through some other media than real-time is ideal in many circumstances.