> It is sometimes claimed that the internet will lead to a "democratization
of knowledge"

But it didn't.  

We were extremely naive.  

Back when "high bandwidth" was a 300-baud modem, we thought things like
UseNet and BitNet (Bee-L was on BitNet back then.  Arron and I may be the
only "surviving" Bee-L subscribers from those days, I dunno) would become a
global campfire, around which everyone would gather and tell stories, and
thereby create global understanding, sharing, and peace.

We could not have been more wrong.  What happened was that anyone with
divergent views felt that the big campfire was not for them, and millions of
tiny campfires were created, around which like-minded folks gathered to
reinforce their pre-existing biases and exclude anyone who disagreed.  No
matter how fringe one's views, the internet allowed one to find others who
shared similar views, fetishes, or delusions.  The problem with the "global
village"  was all the global village idiots.  Blame AOL and Compuserve for
letting anyone and everyone on the net.  Ted Nelson was right in his 1974
book "Dream Machines/Computer Lib" the threat of destruction was as big as
the gift.  Bigger.  No one wanted to believe Ted, as we were all living like
kings and making money hand over fist, and did not want to pull the plug
until we could work out the social engineering.

The fragmentation of society that resulted brought us to where we are today,
where demagogues look like legitimate leaders to enough people to elect them
in Poland, Russia, and the USA.

As for the critique Peter posted, yes Bee-L is often viciously dismissive of
contrasting views.  So are other beekeeping forums. None are without sin.
The interesting thing is that this practice has generally driven the actual
experts completely off all public forums along with the "low ignorant
masses".  Anyone still employed by an institution in any professional
capacity cannot educate us with their own personal experience, as they risk
sparking "argument" from a beekeeper, and no matter how hard one tries, one
can never explain without seeming condescending to someone. So, institutions
now prohibit wide swaths of people from participating in public forums of
any sort. 

It all went to hell in terms of beekeeper civility when varroa came along
and turned lazy beekeepers into former beekeepers on a wholesale basis.
Prior scourges of bees were far less virulent and far less ubiquitous than
varroa became.  I watched both varroa and SHB slowly invade Virginia to the
point that varroa made it up the mountains to most of my yards, and SHB made
it as far as Richmond, and even further for careless operations.  One wants
to save one's own bees from the ignorance and neglect of others, and one
also wants to save others from being ignorant and neglectful.  Combine that
with the fact that varroa takes 2 years to kill a colony, and one has the
perfect ingredients for self-delusion by otherwise intelligent and
good-intentioned people, and their evangelism in their honest attempts to
tell everyone about their "success".    We are all guilty of wanting to
solve the problem, and also of not wanting others to be led astray by
clearly lame approaches that have no chance of being effective.

I'll admit to being "guilty as charged", but I only poked fun at people who
clearly engaged in self-aggrandizing.  Dr Pedro Rodriguez, of FGMO fame,
Adrian Wenner, who bet on winning a Nobel by disproving Nobel-winning work
(always a losing bet), Ruth Rosin, who continued Adrian's crusade long after
even Adrian gave up, and a few others, mostly because
statistically-insignificant results are insignificant for good reason.  All
of these contrasting views were at least interesting and entertaining.
Subsequent bad ideas that took on a life of their own (powdered sugar,
Metarhizium anisopliae, circular slowly rotated combs...) were far less
interestingly/amusingly wrong.

In my defense, I keep bees atop literal ivory towers.
What's YOUR excuse?  :)

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