The Internet has become humanity’s most widespread source of information. Almost anyone can get access to the Internet, get information about almost any subject. I can find thousands of sources of information. Some of these are of poor quality – the information is incomplete, biased, or even false. However, with care it is possible to avoid most of this junk.
Typical Library
If I have a question, I can find answers within minutes, even if I’m not near a library. My phone can connect to the Internet easily, and whatever question I have, I can find answers.
Back in the day, we had an encyclopedia at our home. We had a dictionary, maybe a few other references of various kinds. If I had a question I could go to the encyclopedia and get an answer – assuming that the topic was covered by the encyclopedia. Otherwise, I’d have to go to the library.
The library was the main source of information. In order to use it, I had to wait until its operational hours. This was usually something like 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Sometimes there were open for a few hours on the weekend; sometimes, not.
I could go there and look up my topic using the card catalog. This was a huge collection of index cards, each having information about a book. I’d find the appropriate drawer, arranged alphabetically. I could then look through the cards it contained until I found the desired topic. This would give me a cryptic set of letters and numbers, which told me where the book was.
Then I’d have to go through the stacks of books, trying to find the particular book referred to. When I was a kid we used the Dewey Decimal System. This was later replaced by the Library of Congress Classification System. Either way, you got a unique number for the book, and had to hunt it down in the stacks. Not difficult, but it took a bit of effort.
Card Catalog
Sometimes the book I sought was a reference book, which could not be checked out of the library. Sometimes I could take the book out for a couple of weeks.
I would often take the book home to read it at my leisure. Over the next few days, in my spare time, I could look up whatever my question was, maybe satisfy my curiosity. Sometimes, the text referred me to some other topic. Then I might need to go back to the library to track down a book about that subject.
All of this sounds highly inconvenient. Compared to the Internet, I suppose it is. But back then, we were always going out for something or other. If we needed to purchase something, we had to go to the store. We needed to go to a mailbox to post a letter – but there were mailboxes at almost every corner. We were just used to having to go out.
Certainly, we couldn’t get the instant results we can get now. Between a question arising in my mind, and finding an answer, I might spend a few minutes. Back in the day, it could easily require several days or more. In some ways, that’s progress.
But I think when we gain, we also lose. Back in the day we could not get our answers quickly. And when we did get our answers, it was usually in the form of a book, and not a video. There were of course plenty of videos out there, but they weren’t the main focus of information. I don’t even know whether the libraries at the time ever loaned out videos; I tend to doubt it. These were long strips of plastic, hundreds of feet long, wound up a reel. To view it, you had to have a movie projector, which was not common equipment in an ordinary household. So mostly we got books.
This meant that everything was much slower. We needed a day, several days, even a week to get our books. Then we had to read the books, which is slower than watching a video.
This meant that we spent more time digesting the information we sought. We’d read, and then consider what we’d read. Throughout the day, when we weren’t reading, we might revisit the topic, consider it in light of what we had just read about it. We might even discuss it with others, if they were interested. We had plenty of time to think about the subject.
Now, we get that information so fast that our brains can barely keep up. Question to Internet to Google to YouTube, watch the video… it might take an hour, if it’s a long video. And then we can go on to another topic, or watch something else. We can now acquire more information in an hour, than we might have been able to acquire in a week or two. We don’t give our information time to settle, so to speak. We don’t give our brains time to digest it.
Another issues is filters. Back in the day, there were filters that helped to reduce the amount of bullshit that actually gets through. Someone who had an idea would have to write his book. Someone would have to read it and decide whether it was worth publishing. Many nonsensical or crackpot ideas never saw the light of day because the publisher would reject it. The author might talk about his ideas with others, but they wouldn’t usually find wide circulation.
Now, anyone with an Internet account can circulate his ideas throughout the world. He can post on social media. He can create his own website, give it a legitimate-sounding name, and publish his bullshit for all the world to see. And his bullshit will be picked up by like-minded people and circulated. He can even create a Wikipedia page, which might endure because no one troubled to take it down. A great deal of bullshit has become received wisdom because of the lack of filters.
The old-time filtering wasn’t perfect. Many unpopular ideas were rejected, not because they were wrong, but because they conflicted with commonly-held beliefs. Controversial ideas, such as Civil Rights or non-traditional sexual choices were simply ignored. So sometimes the filters throttled new ideas.
Still, the system worked fairly well, and many people benefited from it.
I’m not in favor of going back. There’s no going back, really. The Internet is here to stay. True, some catastrophe might render it inoperative, but people are not going to just abandon it and go back to finding books in the library.
What might be good, though, is to give some offline time to digesting the information you’ve absorbed, thinking about it. Or even finding a book on occasion and actually reading it..
The Internet
The Internet has become humanity’s most widespread source of information. Almost anyone can get access to the Internet, get information about almost any subject. I can find thousands of sources of information. Some of these are of poor quality – the information is incomplete, biased, or even false. However, with care it is possible to avoid most of this junk.
If I have a question, I can find answers within minutes, even if I’m not near a library. My phone can connect to the Internet easily, and whatever question I have, I can find answers.
Back in the day, we had an encyclopedia at our home. We had a dictionary, maybe a few other references of various kinds. If I had a question I could go to the encyclopedia and get an answer – assuming that the topic was covered by the encyclopedia. Otherwise, I’d have to go to the library.
The library was the main source of information. In order to use it, I had to wait until its operational hours. This was usually something like 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Sometimes there were open for a few hours on the weekend; sometimes, not.
I could go there and look up my topic using the card catalog. This was a huge collection of index cards, each having information about a book. I’d find the appropriate drawer, arranged alphabetically. I could then look through the cards it contained until I found the desired topic. This would give me a cryptic set of letters and numbers, which told me where the book was.
Then I’d have to go through the stacks of books, trying to find the particular book referred to. When I was a kid we used the Dewey Decimal System. This was later replaced by the Library of Congress Classification System. Either way, you got a unique number for the book, and had to hunt it down in the stacks. Not difficult, but it took a bit of effort.
Sometimes the book I sought was a reference book, which could not be checked out of the library. Sometimes I could take the book out for a couple of weeks.
I would often take the book home to read it at my leisure. Over the next few days, in my spare time, I could look up whatever my question was, maybe satisfy my curiosity. Sometimes, the text referred me to some other topic. Then I might need to go back to the library to track down a book about that subject.
All of this sounds highly inconvenient. Compared to the Internet, I suppose it is. But back then, we were always going out for something or other. If we needed to purchase something, we had to go to the store. We needed to go to a mailbox to post a letter – but there were mailboxes at almost every corner. We were just used to having to go out.
Certainly, we couldn’t get the instant results we can get now. Between a question arising in my mind, and finding an answer, I might spend a few minutes. Back in the day, it could easily require several days or more. In some ways, that’s progress.
But I think when we gain, we also lose. Back in the day we could not get our answers quickly. And when we did get our answers, it was usually in the form of a book, and not a video. There were of course plenty of videos out there, but they weren’t the main focus of information. I don’t even know whether the libraries at the time ever loaned out videos; I tend to doubt it. These were long strips of plastic, hundreds of feet long, wound up a reel. To view it, you had to have a movie projector, which was not common equipment in an ordinary household. So mostly we got books.
This meant that everything was much slower. We needed a day, several days, even a week to get our books. Then we had to read the books, which is slower than watching a video.
This meant that we spent more time digesting the information we sought. We’d read, and then consider what we’d read. Throughout the day, when we weren’t reading, we might revisit the topic, consider it in light of what we had just read about it. We might even discuss it with others, if they were interested. We had plenty of time to think about the subject.
Now, we get that information so fast that our brains can barely keep up. Question to Internet to Google to YouTube, watch the video… it might take an hour, if it’s a long video. And then we can go on to another topic, or watch something else. We can now acquire more information in an hour, than we might have been able to acquire in a week or two. We don’t give our information time to settle, so to speak. We don’t give our brains time to digest it.
Another issues is filters. Back in the day, there were filters that helped to reduce the amount of bullshit that actually gets through. Someone who had an idea would have to write his book. Someone would have to read it and decide whether it was worth publishing. Many nonsensical or crackpot ideas never saw the light of day because the publisher would reject it. The author might talk about his ideas with others, but they wouldn’t usually find wide circulation.
Now, anyone with an Internet account can circulate his ideas throughout the world. He can post on social media. He can create his own website, give it a legitimate-sounding name, and publish his bullshit for all the world to see. And his bullshit will be picked up by like-minded people and circulated. He can even create a Wikipedia page, which might endure because no one troubled to take it down. A great deal of bullshit has become received wisdom because of the lack of filters.
The old-time filtering wasn’t perfect. Many unpopular ideas were rejected, not because they were wrong, but because they conflicted with commonly-held beliefs. Controversial ideas, such as Civil Rights or non-traditional sexual choices were simply ignored. So sometimes the filters throttled new ideas.
Still, the system worked fairly well, and many people benefited from it.
I’m not in favor of going back. There’s no going back, really. The Internet is here to stay. True, some catastrophe might render it inoperative, but people are not going to just abandon it and go back to finding books in the library.
What might be good, though, is to give some offline time to digesting the information you’ve absorbed, thinking about it. Or even finding a book on occasion and actually reading it..