The Internet quickly became a paradise lost. That is if you thought that the web would usher in a golden age of learning and enlightenment. With information at your fingertips, borders no longer barriers to people and ideas, finally, a flowering of the human race. What a world we could build. Well we got all that plus porn, shopping and bullshit. I don’t have a tally but those three categories must run 75% of the net. I don’t have a real problem with it either, sex, lies, and shopping are as human as apple pie.
Where is the problem? You might even ask if there even is one. There is. The information at available to any one human being as of Saturday the 5th of June 2010 at 10:00 am, is more than has been accessible to any one in the history of our species. That is a good thing. The problem lies with us and the nature of this new library.
In the past we added to the knowledge base by investigating the world around us writing books about what we thought or found . These books found their ways into libraries and classrooms of schools and universities. In the case of hard science, many hurdles had to be jumped before information was thought suitable vetted to print, the social sciences had a softer go but a standard had to be met here too before you were published. It didn’t mean everything published was correct. It meant that there were gatekeepers. These men were the academic and educated elite and they exercised power over the published world. It was a self appointed and know doubt arrogant elite, doing a necessary job. University presses and other publishers provided us with up to date and accurate information on the world.
I will note to forestall complaint that such a system works only when the state is relatively free. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany exercised a control via state apparatus over large segments of the information industry in order to bring about ideological ends that were largely or completely at odds with the facts. Some western nation states on very specific issues like race, engaged in the same campaign of misinformation. This though this was a product of social prejudice and civil rights not fully realized, passive rather than active government suppression of the truth, the result were the same, the public was given false information and so could only come to an inaccurate conclusion.
So what a public needs in order to stay informed is freedom, you can find the full list of necessary freedoms in the constitutions of most Western states. Canadian constitution is a nice one. A pool independent gatekeepers makes up the other half of the equation. Scientific societies, museums, and universities just to mention an important few are tasked with maintaining the standard.
Then along came the Internet. This wild west of the information age where we have a hundreds of standards which effect to leave us with none. We still have the good measures, they migrated to the net intact. The Royal Ontario Museum didn’t change, neither did scientific journals, like the Lancet they still provide the same service to the facts they always have. What happened is that they have been joined by the rest and out numbered.
There are sites that talk about evolution, where you can get accurate information. In that same search page find sites promoting creationism, alien seeding , or any number of opposing ideas. All you have to do is pick a site that conforms best to what you want to believe. I am biased towards Darwin and consider the other ideas to be fantasy. My choice mine is not based on desired outcome, Evolution is correct, the others are incomplete to outright wrong. You get no indication of veracity from the search window, Google’s job is not to decide what ideas are true, just deliver you the items you requested.
What have on the Internet is freedom but no gatekeeper, to be more precise we are now our own keepers. And I have to admit that I don’t have the required knowledge to judge the truth of everything I read on the net. I rely on the experts for help. Only we can’t always know who to trust, or worse we pick someone that has not our interests at heart but their own.
A man Glenn Beck. He is conservative personality. A large part of his show deals with bringing history to his audience. But his interpretation of the past is often at odds with what the standard says. He is in effect for his audience at least rewriting parts of the past. He and other conservatives a certain type are telling people this- National socialist(Nazi’s) are in fact socialist - so they are leftists or communists- as leftists they are akin to liberals - so in effect Nazi’s are Liberals. An absurd ideas that the right likes to promote. If you are inclined to believe Glenn Beck are you ever going to visit a web site that calls that into question?
There are the half truths. Where we get edited information. Edited to provide an opposite account to what actually happened. Again Beck is the example he hosted a gentleman that claims the congress of the United States order bibles printed for schools. This is part of an ongoing attempt to remedy the idea of the separation of church and state in a favourable manner for the church. The full rebuttal can be found at Talk To Action. In effect they use of selected exerts edited to provide support for a position that the original documents in no way support. How likely is it that anyone that listens the Glenn Beck is going to find this information? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m pessimistic.
I don’t know what kind of solution is available. Maybe we could set an age limit on the Internet. Just kidding. It is clear to me that the better educated you are the more tools you have to shift through the bullshit. There is no guarantee that you will, but if you want to you can.
The Internet must remain free, despite the short comings inherent with a mostly anything goes policy. I will put my hope in education and the increasing sophistication of the Internet user. But I think that the war on facts will be a long one and closer than it should be. In the end we win.
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