As of April 2009, there were an estimated 231.5 million websites actively in use. If divided up amongst the Texas population this would equal nine websites per person.
The Internet has drastically changed how many research, compute, and even think. If you’re like me, you have a foggy recollection of some middle school teacher asking you to use books as sources on a bibliography, but have not been asked to use anything but the good ol’ World Wide Web since then.
There was a time when using a website as a source for any sort of academic or school report was considered a level of laziness that bordered on cheating. Nowadays, so long as you don’t quote Wikipedia or some crazy’s blog, practically any site is fair game.
It’s almost impossible to imagine a time when people couldn’t solve pointless arguments by just pulling out an iPhone and typing a few words into an Internet browser.
In that mystical place known as the past, copy editors would make phone calls to fact check stories before letting them go to print. Today, copy editors at The Daily Cougar just type names and facts into Google or the UH website to verify their accuracy. It’s much faster, but not necessarily more effective.
There are several downsides to our growing dependence on cyber sources for information. The most obvious of those, of course, is that electronic sources can be less trustworthy. For basic, undisputed facts, reliable websites can be hard to find. While most books go through a publishing process that helps ensure they are factually correct, practically anyone can buy an official-sounding domain name and spread whatever “truth” they wish to.
There’s no real way to determine if a website is trustworthy or not. There are some that are obviously legitimate (nytimes.com, census.gov) and some that are clearly fake (anything that involves the words “sign up now and get a free laptop!” or concerns aliens running the US government) but in-between is a huge grey area that fools millions of people every day.
It’s hard to see how the ungovernable chaos of the Internet could possibly challenge the reliability of a trip to the library and an old-fashioned reference book. Unless you already know enough about the topic you’re researching to identify which sources can be trusted, counting on websites is not necessarily the best idea.
Just as dangerous as trusting an untrustworthy site is the fact that the wonders of the Internet make it difficult to do your homework honestly. Why go to all the effort to integrate that calculus problem when you can simply type it into a website and see all the steps clearly laid out for you? The only problem with this method is that, when it becomes just you and a piece of paper (such as on the final exam), people need to know how to do the math themselves.
When it comes down to it, we’re too reliant on online sources. Making mistakes is that much easier when we forget that looking things up in books, talking to people, and solving math problems with the aid of sheets of equations is how everyone before us did their work.
Casey Goodwin is a mechanical engineering sophomore and may be reached at [email protected].
So now we all know where Casey finds all those "facts".
In books? She's talking about using books. So…yeah, that would be where you find facts.
One could only wish that were true. But sorry, try again.
@GP: Casey is a girl my friend.
And a silly, silly one at that.
To use the beloved "Zoolander", "Ummm, Earth to Casey, cheating and distractions were around before the internet, ok…."
I think most of you are missing the point. I believe she is stating that in this day of immediate global communication anybody who puts an idea on the internet or wrangles there opinion onto any type of medium is intantly given a credibility not necesarily earned. Bababooie to y'all.
She makes many good points, but she ignores many others that somewhat discredits her: Even when all research was done through books, many of us were forced to consider the credibility of the author, the research, etc.
Many of us still use books, and those same skills in determining the legitimacy of the content based on those same factors.
Just like anyone can make a blog, or a website, anyone can publish a book, pamphlet, etc. Her core argument is valid; using the internet to research can be lazy since there is no peer review, etc. in many cases, however, her presentation is what is misleading and somewhat fallacious.
No, she is still wrong. While there are more idiots that can post their opinions on the internet than could write them in books, the internet actually makes it easier to check on the validity of these writings. Resources and credentials can be checked with relative ease, and as long as you aren't an idiot, you can discern what stuff is bull and what isn't.