Really, I think a huge amount of information is available. The world is permeated with channels through which information flows as never before in history.
It's terrific for scientific literature search. It used to be you had to live close to a major university to do anything and even that was slow and spotty.
It gives fantastic access to the world's music. You have to do all the search yourself though, which few do. In the old days a DJ picked out the good stuff for you. Long time gone. Same for the other arts I suppose.
Wikipedia is very good in its way but paper encyclopedias are far better for browsing. That's pretty much impossible with Wiki.
One thing that has been widely noticed about the new Internet world is that it's very hard to hide anything, even from casual browsers, much less determined, focused investigators. Hence I would say that we have already ripped down the veils of secrecy from almost everything. The other important thing is that in principle almost anyone can communicate almost anything to anyone else. I suppose we might consider having public truth conventions to compare notes. Of course they'd be full of liars, fabulists, and scam artists, but some of those people and their constructions can be quite amusing. Anyone up for one in the New York City area?
Really, I think a huge amount of information is available. The world is permeated with channels through which information flows as never before in history.
It's terrific for scientific literature search. It used to be you had to live close to a major university to do anything and even that was slow and spotty.
It gives fantastic access to the world's music. You have to do all the search yourself though, which few do. In the old days a DJ picked out the good stuff for you. Long time gone. Same for the other arts I suppose.
Wikipedia is very good in its way but paper encyclopedias are far better for browsing. That's pretty much impossible with Wiki.
One thing that has been widely noticed about the new Internet world is that it's very hard to hide anything, even from casual browsers, much less determined, focused investigators. Hence I would say that we have already ripped down the veils of secrecy from almost everything. The other important thing is that in principle almost anyone can communicate almost anything to anyone else. I suppose we might consider having public truth conventions to compare notes. Of course they'd be full of liars, fabulists, and scam artists, but some of those people and their constructions can be quite amusing. Anyone up for one in the New York City area?