Do you think information on the Internet still be free and accessible to all Americans in the year 2015?
Q & A III
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Ah, what a perfect question to ask a librarian! I’ll tell you that, unless something really, really crazy happens, it’s damn near impossible for anyone to regulate internet content. If anything, I think it will have spiraled more out of control by 2015. If it does end up spinning out of control and there is a whole hell of a lot of more hullabaloo on it than there is now, perhaps the sites with the “real” information will charge a fee, but I seriously doubt that will happen. Government information, for example, is required to be freely available to all Americans. So, unless some serious legislation changes, all of that will be available. Not to mention the millions of dollars people who maintain the sites make off of advertisers.
All that being said, I suppose the answer to this question depends on what kind of information you’re talking about. If you’re talking about reliable, accurate, and authoritative information, then, yes, it should still be available for free. Librarians, and others, are working extremely hard to evaluate and index the “good” information available on the internet.
In sum, yes, information will be free. Good information, however, will be EXTREMELY hard to find as things like Wikipedia and Knol and all of these other collaborative projects continue to expand. The internet is just so darn vast that it is IMPOSSIBLE to regulate! The government would have to form some sort of super team of thousands of people to patrol and censor/edit its content. Ha! Internet Police!
I realize that my thoughts didn’t come out as well on screen as they did in my head.
I was trying to make the point that people make enough money off of advertising that they shouldn’t need to charge more fees.
And also that the information will be free, but that includes bad information.
A giant swarm of information is attacking us from all directions. Librarians affectionately refer to this as “information overload.”
Ok. Sorry if I’ve confused you terribly.