Used to be getting information was hard work. You had to engage other humans in conversation or get yourself to the nearest library or book store and sort through volume after volume of tedious books full of small print and big words.
BOR-ING!
Thankfully, we now have the internet. Sure, you still have to do some searching, but nothing like the days of old. Smarter folks than I have seen to that.
Need to research plant biology? Have a yearning to learn about medieval society? Wonder how whales get the water out of their handy blow hole?
Travel no further than the internet.
Of course not every piece of information you find online is going to be true. And yes, it can be harder to figure out what is true and what is not without the benefit of some slimy-looking person in front of you displaying the book they wrote or the gadget they want you to buy - in their trunk.
If you can navigate away from the seedier parts of the World Wide Web, however, you will find more information than you ever dreamed of knowing. If you live in my state, Florida, or several others you can even complete every grade of school online, starting with Kindergarten. Pretty soon we’ll have kindergarten classrooms that look like the classrooms on the Starship Enterprise to keep up with cramming all this information into our brains.
It’s not just data that’s important, though. Sure, googling “particle physics” or “expanding universe theory” passes an afternoon quite nicely - but what about things happening on the other side of the world?
What about repression, riots, women’s rights, bombings, protests against governments - all those things you would have relied on the news to tell you about in the past?
That’s information, my friends. And that’s widely available too.
The great thing about information is that it self-replicates. When something is learned, you can’t help but want to learn about more things. Maybe not the same things, but as the great quote by Oliver Wendel Holmes tells us:
“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
What’s even better - those who oppose information can’t hide. Once the information is out there, you can’t take it away. Before it was much easier to suppress information on a wider scale. Governments and Warlords controlled printing and newspapers, therefore they controlled information. Now that the people can get access to the internet somewhere that power to arrest the truth fades more quickly every day.
Sadly, in my opinion, no one can force someone to *want* to know anything. Ignorance being blissful and all that, right? If on the off chance you do want to expand your world, it’s really easy now.
Point. Click. Search.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
Photo by Melody Bakeeff via Flickr
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