[fburnaby]

Hmm. I might be a "the internet is altering the course of human evolution" person. But it depends on what you mean by "the course of human evolution".

Do you mean "human evolution" in the typical biological sense, like talking about our genes and our physiology? Or something broader?

I'm pretty convinced that using the Internet has somewhat (not necessarily dramatically, but somewhat) already altered how I think about the world an dhow I see it. Certainly it has altered how I behave and spend much of my time. It also has clearly altered (I'd say dramatically) how we communicate, who we communicate with, and thus also who we consider to be part of our "in-group" (I'm thinking about Peter Singer's expanding circle). That has a huge impact on our moral attitudes, even. Very central changes to what we're like. Some people (I think rightly) consider this to be an evolution, in the broad systems sense of the word.

As for actual biological evolution, I guess that's less obvious to me. But it sure doesn't seem impossible. Yes, the beginning of the Internet is in some sense a consequence of our nature, not a cause. But now that it's here, it can interact with us; it is part of our environment, and could affect our biology. This idea isn't strange to ecologists, who typically refer to it as "top-down" forcing.

So my attitude to this is that, no, the existence of the Internet doesn't only "make our true nature more apparent". Or rather, it makes our true nature apparent in the same way that the elongated shape of some flowers illustrates the nature of hummingbirds (http://www.rubythroat.org/Article860629.html). From that article: "It's obvious that a hummingbird's long narrow beak is an adaptation for feeding on long narrow flowers, but the corollary is also true: There are species of tube-shaped flowers that are adapted for being pollinated by organisms with skinny, tapered mouthparts." I want to say something similar: "Yes, there is an ecological relationship between us and the Internet, and thus the Internet reflects our natures, but it's also its own thing, a part of our environments, alongside which we should expect to evolve."

One interesting advocate of this view is the science historian George Dyson, if you're interested in exploring the idea more.