People took an interest in everything but were not committed to anything. He [Kierkegaard] attributed this growing cultivation of curiosity and the consequent failure to distinguish the important from the trivial to the press. Its new massive distribution of desituated information, he held, was making every sort of information immediately available to anyone thereby producing an anonymous, detached spectator. …. Kierkegaard thought that, thanks to these powers, the press would complete the leveling of qualitative distinctions, distinctions of worthiness, a leveling that had been going on in the West since the Enlightenment. (16)

All qualitative distinctions are, indeed, being leveled. Relevance and significance have disappeared. And this is an important part of the attraction of the Web. Nothing is too trivial to be including. Nothing is so important that it demands a special place. (16)

The temptation is to live in a world of stimulating images and stimulated commitments and thus to lead a simulated life. Far from encouraging unconditional commitments, the Net tends to turn all of life into a risk free game. So, in the end, although Information technology does not prohibit unconditional commitments, it does inhibit them.

The test as to whether one had acquired an unconditional commitment would come if one had the incentive and courage to transfer what one had learned to the concrete situation in the real world. There one would confront what Kierkegaard called "the danger and the harsh judgment of existence." And precisely the attraction of the Net would inhibit that final plunge. Anyone using the Net that was led to risk his or her real identity in the real world would thus have to act against the grain of what attracted them to the Net in the first place.

Here men are demoralized in the shortest possible time on the largest possible scale, at the cheapest possible price.

…just as no individual assumes responsibility for the consequences of the information in ‘the Press,’ no one assumes responsibility for the accuracy of the information on the Web. The information has become so anonymous that no one knows or cares where it came from. Of course, in so far as one does not take action on the information, no one really cares if it is reliable. (16: emphasis, CE)

Such commentators do not take a stand on the issues they speak about. Indeed, the very ubiquity of the net makes any such local stand seem irrelevant. As Kierkegaard puts it: "A public is neither a nation, nor a generation, nor a community, nor a society, nor these particular men, for all these are only what they are through the concrete; no single person who belongs to the public makes a real commitment." (16)

If you are capable of being a [hu]man [being], then danger and the harsh judgment of existence on your thoughtlessness will help you become one.

The only qualitative distinction is between those sites that are interesting and those that are boring. Life consists in fighting off boredom by being a spectator at everything interesting in the universe and in communicating with everyone else so inclined. Such a life produces a self that has no defining content or continuity but is open to all possibilities and to constantly being drawn into new games.

…the anonymous spectator takes no risks. The person in the aesthetic sphere keeps open all possibilities and has no fixed identity that could be threatened by disappointment, humiliation or loss. Surfing the Web is ideally suited to such a life. On the Internet commitments are at best virtual commitments and losses only virtual losses. (17)

…the self requires not "variableness and brilliancy" but "firmness, balance and steadiness." So, according to Kierkegaard: "As a result of knowing and being everything possible, one is in contradiction with oneself." (17)

Without some way of telling the relevant from the irrelevant and the significant from the insignificant, everything becomes equally interesting and equally boring. ….

This inability to distinguish the trivial from the important eventually stops being excciting and leads to the very boredome the aesthete and net surfer dedicate their lives to avoiding. Thus, Kierkegaard concludes: "every aesthetic view of life is desparie, and everyone who lives aesthetically is in despair whether he knows it or not. But when one knows it … a higher form of existence is an imperative requirement." (17)

…the beginner must take up a perspective from which to distinguish what is relevant from what is irrelevant.

Taking up such a perspective requires taking risks which involves the learning more and more in his or her tasks. While it might seem that this involvement would interfere with detached rule-testing and so would inhibit further skill development, in fact just the opposite seems to be the case. Only if the detached rule-following stance of the novice is replaced by involvement, can there be further advancement, while resistance to the frightening acceptance of risk and responsibility can lead to stagnation. (18)

[examples from student nurses]

Thus studies of skill acquisition have shown that, unless the outcome matters and unless the person developing the skill is willing to accept the pain that comes from failure and the elation that comes with success, the learner will be stuck at the level of competence and never achieve mastery. Only those willing to take risks go on to become experts. (18)

It follows that, since expertise can only be acquired through involved engagement with actual situations, the possibility of acquiring expertise is lost in the disengaged discussions and deracinated knowledge acquisition characteristic of the Net. Not only is the detached learner unable to acquire specific disiciplinary skills, but, for the same reason, such a learner could not acquire the general skills for getting around in the world and getting on with others that Aristotle calls phronesis or practical wisdom. (18)

Any choice I make does not get a grip on me so it can always be revoked. (18 - see quote, 18-19 on the despair of the ethical.)

Kierkegaard concludes that one can not stop the proliferating of information and turn it into relevant knowledge by deciding what is worth knowing: one can only turn information into relevant and meaningful knowledge, and one can only care about one’s performance and so develop skills, if one has a strong identity bsaed on a serious, long-lasting commitment. (19)

…are neither the ones that I arbitrarily choose nor the ones that I am obliged to keep because of my social role. Rather, these special commitments are experienced as grabbing my whole being. When I respond to such a summons by making an unconditional commitment, this commitment determines who I am and what will be the significant issue for me for the rest of my life. Political and religious movements can grab us in this way as can love relationships and, for certain people, such vocations as the law or music. (19)

[SEE ALSO next paragraph]

There is no way to have a meaningful life and to develop particular skills and the skill of being a good human being without taking risks. (19)

Only by working closely with students in a shared situation in the real world can teachers with strong identities ready to take risks to preserve their commitments pass only their passion and skill so their students can turn information into knowledge and practical wisdom. In so far as we want to teach skill in particular domains and practical wisdom in life, which we certainly do, we thus finally run up against the limits of the World Wide Web. As far as I can see, learning by apprenticeship can work only in the nearness of the classroom and laboratory; never in cyberspace. (20)