Access to information or misinformation?

I was thinking about that today. The fact that we say access to information is a lot more easier now than it used to be. With television, newspapers and Internet, you have a constant feed of information and you don’t even have to make an effort. We say it’s good. You know, more information, more education, better population, better jobs, etc. I’m not convinced.

Honestly, before today I thought the Internet, television and all other modern communication mediums were all in the best interest of the population. I stopped for a couple of minutes and really thought about it. A hundred years ago, when you had a problem, you had to read a book and really investigate on the subject. People writing books were people with a certain level of education, which means you could always hope for a certain level of quality. Books were the knowledge. Of course, not many people had access to school and education wasn’t really that important at the time so it didn’t really matter for most of the population. It was some sort of elite population.: that 1% that could afford going to school and saw the interest of it.

So what is it today? Everybody has access to information but still it doesn’t change. There’s so many crap on the Internet and on T.V. that there’s still a huge lack of good information. So much misinformation is going on and it scares me because we’re not necessarily further than we were 100 years ago. The only difference is that everybody think they hold the truth. Everybody’s an expert today. You know, “I’ve read that on the Internet”, “I’ve watched that show”, etc. Everybody holds the truth and everybody fights for it, not really knowing why, just because they’ve read it somewhere.

100 years ago, you had that 1% of population taking important decisions. Today, you still have 1% of the population or even less taking the decisions, but 85% think they can do better. Because you know, they’ve read about it on the internet.

I’m not saying there’s 85% dumb people and 1% elite people. I’m more going against “false experts”. It’s not because you read something on the web or watch a t.v. show that what you read/see is absolute truth. Easier access to information is good, but it also brings easier access to misinformation. Unfortunately, misinformation is more accessible.

Let’s make it a positive post and says that overall I think we win. But you have to choose between access to information and access to misinformation.