The final evolution of the ePundit may end up as a version of de Chardin’s radical noosphere. Here “the convergence of thinking” via the “collective cerebralisation” [35] offers a creative and chaotic opinion cosmology, found on a variety of platforms. The future might be a highly transient opinion space, which bubbles up as a form of cybernetic collective consciousness. Opinion in this regard, has always been an ephemeral phenomenon. In conversation, as soon as an opinion leaves the mouth it disappears into the ether perhaps heard and reacted to, perhaps not. Previous paper opinion incarnations were equally impermanent too. Who remembers the column of our favourite writers the day after publication? (McNair, 2011) Who can say anyone reads them at all? Perhaps all opinion-making is what Nimmo and Combs (1992) refer to as symbolic healing: it looks and feels the part but makes little difference.
First Monday, Eve Forrest, Alistair S. Duff, Volume 21, Number 4 >