"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control-'indoctrination,' we might say-exercised through the mass media." -Noam ChomskyWith the consolidation of control over the mass media, there are fewer and fewer independent voices being broadcast over ever more powerful channels.
The radical novelty of the Internet has caused a huge segment of the population to go on-line, where they have in the main no previous experience in computers and software.
Computer software is intellectual property. It is the embodiment of knowledge and philosophy. The gullible Web surfer and e-mail recipient falls prey to junk e-mail, Internet hoaxes and product advertisements disguised as Computer Operating System alert messages.
On the Internet, there should be bona-fide sources for verification. Example: Snopes.com for confirmation of Urban Legends. CIAC.org for debunking Internet hoaxes.
In the old days, there were organizations like "Top 5%", who awarded Internet content.
Today, Pholosophy-ware will construct search engines which, instead of rewarding marketing clout, will rate sites on their objective cultural value, the value of their accuracy and objective intellectual authority.
Natural-Language Processing is used to construct the Expert System which will assist the Internet user in obtaining the most reliable version of the information (s)he seeks or disseminates.
The primary asset of Pholosophy-ware will be this knowledge base and expertise in programming networked client-server systems.
The end-user interface to the Pholosophy-ware knowledge base will take the form of filters applied to the user's computer interface (Web Browser, Mail/News reader, etc.). These filters will automatically protect the user's privacy (selectively prevent cookies being set by virulent Web servers), and will automatically warn against bogus information.