“The book,” by Alan Watts, is Watt’s writings about the self and ego in relation to everything as well as enlightened predictictions about the human condition based on his apparent observations on society. “The book” explores how we as humans tend to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the “prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.” This hallucination “underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.” For example, he predicts that through the miniaturization and consolidation of technology, we will eventually see "the end of individual privacy, to an extent where it may even be impossible to conceal one's thoughts. At the end of the line, no one is left with a mind of his own: there is just a vast and complex community-mind, endowed perhaps, with such fantastic powers of control and prediction that it will already know its own future for years and years to come." The book itself was written in 1966 around the same time the internet was in its early stages of development, and he actually managed to predict a hivemind emerging out of technology. Which leads to my first question. Through apparent observation of the internet we can start to see the start of community thinking likened to that of a hivemind. Lack of knowledge to form one's own opinion leads people to take the easier route of simply adopting that of what he/she sees on the internet. Now this isn't necessarily bad. Some arguments on the internet are well-informed and thought out; however, this isn’t always the case. Some arguments are poorly cited and are made to simply supply an alternative argument contrary to the “truth” or fact. This can lead to very poor choices that affect us all on a political and personal level.