After reading Lisa’s blog post “Open Culture: Burke, Paine and Jaron Lanier” I started thinking about the abundance of information available online. Since the Internet is open to everyone, it is almost impossible to regulate the information out there. Everyone can post online anything even without being a reliable source. And for us, the normal consumers it is very hard to differentiate what site is useful and what is just nonsense. When I go to Google or any other browser and try to find some information thousands of sites come up. Which ones are the ones I am looking for? I do not have time to go through all the recommended sites so I pick the ones on the first page. So is there still the idea of sharing information with everyone possible? Is it worth to write a blog or have your own web site when only few people will actually get to read it?
I agree with Lanier that at the beginning of the internet the idea of sharing ideas between people was a great one, something revolutionary. But since then the Internet mutated into something nearly uncontrollable. It can be used for good and for bad. I believe the internet should be open to everyone with some restrictions. Educative sites should be available to everyone. But sharing music and other copyright file without giving the credit to the author needs to be controlled. Everyone wants to get things for free if it is possible, but if we keep doing it, nobody will want to post online anything anymore. And that is the whole point of the Internet, isn’t?
Some things people are happy to share for free, and likely will continue to. Others, yes, people need to get compensated for and so need to control. Or seek donations. Or leverage in other ways.
ReplyDeleteSome ways to filter the noise - communities of users (build a personal learning network via Twitter or other tools; be an active Diigo user) are probably the most useful. More specialized search tools can help - Google Scholar rather than the main Google search, for example; academic databases. Also learning how to do a better search on Google/Bing etc can make a huge difference.
And that's why you're in college!