Before the Internet, publishing written material for the public was costly. It would take a huge investment to go into the publishing business as one would have to pay for materials, printing equipment and manpower expenses. Thus, there were relatively only a few players in the industry, most of them huge companies.
With the Internet emerging as an accessible low-cost medium, now every writer, whether amateur or professional, can practically publish his or her work for public consumption without incurring significant costs. Anyone who wants to write something just has to make a website, blog, or a Facebook/Twitter account.
While this may all seem good for writers, it has brought with it another problem: credibility. There simply has been too much information out there that some people don’t know which of them is true. Some websites and blogs are littered with outrageous rumors or news which were not obtained first hand. Worse, there are some which feature content which are completely fabricated.
This has rarely been a problem before the internet. True, there were some publications which regularly featured rumors or unconfirmed reports. But generally, most of the published news were properly gathered and screened by numerous editors before they were published. People, more or less, could trust their news.
Now, people are being forced to be more skeptical about everything they come across the web. People have learned to scrutinize information and to look for any proof backing them up. In a way, this flaw on the structure of the Internet eventually benefitted us. We are now forced to think, which is what we should have been doing in the first place anyway!
Monch Bacani
8th entry
4 comments:
Hmmm...maybe it would depend on the site which contains the information. There are some sites, like academic journal sites, which would probably contain sifted information already.
As for Wikipedia, though it is most often cited by high school and grade school students as source for their assignments, it's another matter altogether. :)
agree. the internet is just a complexed world of so much information, so to speak. perhaps, we users have to take extra effort to be more selective with the information before us.
i remember the time na gumagamit pa tayo ng grolier, britanica at encarta. sayang hindi na siya "libre" pero useful pa rin yun eh. i guess people should start buying (pirated) versions of these cd encyclopedia. at least we know these are reliable ;)
naku, just found out from moi na yung founder ng wikipedia pala somewhat connected sa britannica. haha
although, moi said ngayon daw sa wikipedia, moderated na. people can report if mali yung info.
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