Now everything is accessible on the Internet while previously information was stored in books and paper. Do you see this being a positive of that end?

Now everything is accessible on the Internet while previously information was stored in books and paper. Do you see this being a positive of that end?

One of the most impactful changes in the availability of human knowledge is moving all those physical sources — books, manuscripts, newspapers and archival documents — to a digital infrastructure that already exists on the internet. While the move has real and significant downsides which I think are all avoidable, if the right systems for media literacy, information quality and access equity are created at the same time as this technology, it finally brings really meaningful benefits that outweigh those drawbacks (which are very real but not insurmountable) to an extent that is unparalleled.

The perhaps most obvious benefit of internet-based information availability is the unprecedented proliferation of knowledge access we see. Throughout most of human history, access to meaningful knowledge has been limited by the need to be physically present in a library; the ability to pay for books; and the social credentials that granted entrance into university or business settings where knowledge resided. The internet has outdone these barriers in spectacular fashion; a student in a villages innermost rural reaches with a smart phone and data connection now has access to academic journals, encyclopaedias, historical archives, educational video courses and communities of experts that effectively would’ve been impossible for the equivalent individuals just a generation ago. The implications of this democratisation are far-reaching for social mobility, /equalising educational opportunity and permeating the economic advantage that books and other knowledge systems on paper could never provide at anything like scale.

Speed and completeness of information sourcing via the internet represent one additional transformational benefit. Knowledge synthesis, information solution of problems and responding to new developments in any field now take minutes when it previously could have taken weeks or days of combing through libraries. It is particularly scientific collaboration — researchers from all over the world can simultaneously access datasets, build on published findings of one another with little lag time and contribute to global knowledge production at a speed and scale otherwise unimaginable in print-based academic systems. While you can quantify these practical ramifications — in terms of the fast-tracked medical research, technological innovation and scientific discoveries — they are simple clouds but real rain to people all over the planet.

The volume and heterogeneity of the views contained in web-accessible information, is also an advantage over print-based systems, which by necessity must be selective having a more narrowly editorially filtered knowledge terrain. Now voices, experiences and traditions of knowledge excluded from mainstream print — because of the constraints of what is commercially viable, or kernelled decisions to restrict certain perspectives in papers — can find platforms accessible to readers that bring new contributions to the global commons; one less likely available to them otherwise.

Yet the obstacles to internet-centric information accessibility are real and need sober recognition. Such content as misinformation, disinformation and simply really misleadingly manipulative information humans run into over the Internet spread with the exact same efficiency, virality and speed on Internet platforms like any fact-checking and thoroughly vetted first-class expertise information: here is what for years had been contextualizing just one of those items by which extremely serious problems are created. Without the editorial gatekeeping characteristic of print publication, made-up statements, pseudoscientific claims and ideologically driven distortions flow freely with peer-reviewed research and expert-verified reporting through a single undifferentiated information landscape that far too many users lack the critical literacy skills to navigate reliably. The measured harms — in relation to pandemic-related health misinformation, political weaponization of disinformation campaigns and the undermining of the minimal shared facts needed for democratic discourse — are both real and severe.

Another issue is the ephemeral and fragile nature of digital information. They require neither electricity nor platforms to survive, no corporate policies or network infrastructure — they can be physically preserved over centuries without any technical mediation. Digital information, for the most part, is neither safely stored in physical objects (where a new bit of media permanently saves all prior states) nor usefully accessible through processes as straightforward and understood as printing but remains liable to many of the server crashes, format obsolescence and platform closures—along with a more concerted policy of deletion—that pose real threats to the long-term preservation of human knowledge that printed permanence lacked.

The type of reading — and thinking — that the internet encourages raises other worries as well. Cognitive Psychology research suggests that the hyperlinked, multimedia, notification interrupted way we access information online is likely to encourage scanning-reading patterns that can only support shallow engagement, lack of sustained linear reading which complex knowledge absorbs requires — increasing probabilities for populations with moral hazard ensembles more informed at a wide level but less capable intellectual engagement requisite real expertise.

The benefits, in terms of democratised access, efficient retrieval and diverse knowledge absolutely outweigh the risks — all real but manageable by teaching digital literacy, regulating for information quality, and nurturing deep reading practices. The trick is not to turn back the clock on digital information, but rather to build the personal skills and institutional structures that will enable us to seize much of what will be gained while responsibly navigating its real risks.