I’m just going to steal the response I read years ago.
“I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.”
I’ve started l to realize that actual information worth reading is not available. Like I cant access in depth medical course or text book in engineering. Lots of beginner tutorials marketed as 7 minute abs.
Information is valuable and nobody gives it away for free. We have access to a worlds worth of crappy, unvetted trash information. But the vast majority of the good stuff is still locked away as it always was.
Does MIT not have open courses anymore? Besides that I wonder what you are looking for? I can find free scientific papers to improve my hobbies, watch along as professionals explain and do their jobs, graduate level math and computer science videos from the comfort of my home. As a student around 2000 (Google existed, barely) it was not so easy, even with access to university library you still had to find what you were looking for with worse tools and there was less of it. And who on earth was going to take the time to show you exactly how it worked their lab a thousand miles away? Once a week you could go to a seminar and a visiting scientist gives a slideshow. It’s better now.
Opencourseware is great. But what they’re a rarity instead of the norm. I think Stanford posted lectures for a bit too. Good sources of information exist. Just like there is research we all can access but there’s not as much as it appears without having to resort to piracy.
It became clearer to me when writing and researching topics. I still had to go to the university library and pour through books. Because that quality of information in their library is not there online. The internet didn’t replicate that knowledge. It gave us a surface level blog about topics. Don’t get me wrong. I know there’s lots of blogs and people giving in depth research for free on their speciality. But its still not a good source of knowledge like exists in academic libraries.
As an oncology researcher, to do my job I have to pay approximately $30-60 per article for about half the articles in my 1500 article library for my CAR cell therapy research.
The scientific field is slowly improving over the last 10 years, but it still sucks, and I can only read the abstract for free, which doesn’t provide enough details for my layperson research on topics like behavior or autophagy.
I’m one of the lucky few that has an institutional subscription, and most companies don’t pay for institutional subscriptions. Also, I can’t, as someone suggested, hack into the University wifi which is a half hour away and still do my job onsite.
Between Libgen and SciHub I’m interested in hearing an example of what you can’t find out there.
Like I cant access in depth medical course or text book in engineering
Why not? The common ‘hack’ is to join the wifi at your local uni if you don’t have the necessary subscriptions for the platform but lots of stuff is open-access
That’s true but what I meant was that when I went to school it opened my eyes to how there is internet information and then there’s this other academic information. My own opinion is that I see a distinction between what I can learn online vs what I can learn with a text book. The internet is good at making me think I’m getting this massive access to knowledge when its really more superficial factoids rather than actually knowledge. And that’s because knowledge is sold like anything else
This does make me think. I remember the days where I would turn up at the library to read books. With my phone, I can read and learn but instead I doom scroll.
We can’t use oil or gas anymore.
Also, there are 15 billions people on earth.
I don’t know if the Internet has made folks dumber per se. What we may be experiencing is the visibility of semi anonymous unfiltered thought. I’ve had conversations with individuals online who have made claims that are egregiously incorrect and will defend those claims to the death but when discussed in person, they are amenable to discourse and can change their opinions.
I’m not saying this is true for all cases but I think the is a lot more going on here in our digital age.
Edit: removed an embarrassing typo.
Nah, I’m sure it hasn’t. It just seems like it has.
Part of it is the fact that it’s easier for people speak freely to an audience, and…maybe some of them shouldn’t…
There’s also the fact that it’s a lot easier to consider oneself an expert. For better or worse, respect for authority has plummeted, and there’s so much information that anybody can find citations for just about any claim.
If you don’t believe me, I can link you to some articles about it…
