Think About It

Prophetic words from men like Vannevar Bush are interesting to note as we look back at the ideas they were propagating before they came to fruition. With the great interactivity and connectedness that the advent of the information age has brought us, we are now connected from town to town, coast to coast, and sea to shining sea, all in real time. Information can be analyzed and shared in ways Bush, Licklider, and Engelbart could only dream would become possible. There is no doubting technology like this has innumerous values within our society today. As we experience these benefits everyday in our life, it is whether we take them for granted or not that marks their true value.
These conveniences have given us the ability to take the grunt work out of much of our scientific and mathematic research. However, what might we be losing by having all of this information at our fingertips? The aforementioned men voiced their reservations about the tediousness of organizing one’s thoughts, searching for relevant research conducted by other scholars of the same field, then finding links that connect things together. This left no time to analyze what they were trying to do in the first place.
These men understood what having a machine like a computer to organize and a network system like the internet connecting people together to share information would do for a scholarly community.
Fast forward to present day. The way most young people get their information is directly from this type of source. This open information source we call the internet is useful at finding any type of information imaginable. This means, however, all information good or bad, correct or incorrect, is up for grabs.
As a generation used to having information like this easily available to us, we often do not understand what it is like to fully research a topic. We take for granted the information we find is correct, accurate, and pertinent for our intended use. With this type of attitude, we lose the ability and the appreciation of what it is like to work and struggle for what we are looking for. By taking for granted everything we see in writing and print is true, we lose the ability to find our own truth. We may be able to find any information we want, but we need to remember and appreciate the struggles of those who worked before use without such tools. Otherwise, we no longer value the ability to question the information given to us.