To Internet, or not to Internet?

Over the past couple of weeks, I have a heightened awareness about technology and its effect on academic studies. I would like to praise myself as one of the last few generations that did not grow up with the internet in their houses, if I wanted to learn something, I went to a book. In fact, my family did not get internet installed in our home until I was in high school – and then, it was dial-up. Nowadays, I think you would find it rare to enter a home that does not have an internet connection.

The availability of resources coming into ones home is astonishing. The information you can grasp in a second is mind-blowing. But I often wonder what information at our fingertips does to us?

As someone trained in history, I have a need to feel the paper on my skin as I flip through a book. Knowing someone spent time and effort researching this book, placing footnotes, leafing through other books and papers to reach their conclusion provides a sense of commitment and respect to the author of the work. With that being said, I also enjoy digitized articles that allows me to work from home instead of making a trip to the library after a long day at work.

However, digitization can be a scary thought. With accessibility to sources being so profound comes the desire to forge those documents. How much easier is it to pull a picture from Google and edit it in Adobe? Photo editing and document forgery has become a lot easier with the introduction of new technologies.

Likewise, articles themselves become unreliable at times. I open up an article that appears legitimate online, to discover that it is plagiarized, unreliable and unauthentic. Nothing about that web document looks suspicious until I take the time to cross reference their data – that’s when I discover that is a complete fraud, nothing is factual, and I have just been duped. However, I bet many others wouldn’t have even taken the time to cross reference.

So, where do I stand in technology vs. old school? Who really knows? There is no denying that the advantages to technology are great to academic study. It allows people to write, read, understand and learn. It can also allow people to over think, misdiagnose, and misunderstand. Technology allows idea sharing, networking and the communication of research. It can also allow idea stealing, document forgery and plagiarism. I digress; maybe the problem isn’t technology, but the way it is used. Like any new development, technology needs time to understand what it is, where its place is and how to be used. In the meantime, I think we as people can step back from the information train now and then, go to a library and old school it. Sometimes, the best gratification can come from a book.