I'm preoccupied with the social impacts of the internet. So sue me.

One of them reaches out to individuals at the most basic level: The "answer" to any question is readily available on line. The problem is that there is no quality control. No, I'm not an Andrew Keen afficianado, but previously, if you wanted to get something published in a journal, book, or such, a group of professionals kept the gate. Oh sure, you could publish something yourself, but distribution was going to be a *****. Well, that's not really an issue any more.

First, you have the fact that internet publishing of all sorts is readily available. That's well and good, but it means that for anything but the hard sciences and math, any idiot can offer up their opinion as fact. The technotopian vision of people being exposed to all that information, and expanding their horizons is absolute bunk. What actually happens is that people consume information and assoicate with people on line that they already agree with. If they interact with those who disagree, it's usually to get in a fight. Hence the tongue in cheek, but entirely accurate "Godwin's Law," originally developed for usenet, which basically states that as an online discussion gets longer, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis approaches one." Nothing mind-expanding going on here. Rather, it's just mirroring...IN GENERAL, we personalize our media to ensure that we never have to be exposed to something we don't agree with.

This personalization can, in fact, be demonstrated by some rather interesting network analyses done on amazon book purchases. I don't, off the top of my head remember who does these analyses, but there are more than one, and the pattern has remained consistent. They show this: people who read "liberal" or "conservative" books, DON'T read books from the "other" side. An example is here

Which brings me to my second point: Print and video media have been changed, because there is now worldwide distribution for any content, no matter how "niche." I can go to amazon and buy a book that my local store probably wouldn't have carried 20 years ago, because they have limited shelf space, and can't waste it on poor sellers. By contrast, inventory, as opposed to retail space, is cheap, and selling 10000 books at 10000 copies each is a cool 100 million. Can't think of any 100 million sellers off the top of my head. That's real profit.

So you can personalize all that too.

The point: We are inundated with information, of varying qualities and value. Education must ironically shift to something that looks more classical, with a grounding the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. If we are truly entering an "information" economy, then the advantage goes to those humans possessing the edge in information processing and analysis. The above three subjects give you the critical thinking skills you need to weed out bad arguments, and assess the information, opinions and facts on their merits.

Time for a massive overhaul.