How the Internet Changed Truth

A couple of weeks ago I did a blog post on education based off of an article my science teacher had given us. A little while after that post he gave us yet another editorial. I just got around to reading it a few days ago, and found it very interesting. I unfortunately cannot link to it, as New Scientist requires a subscription, but the editorial was titled "Why Untidiness Is Good for Us." David Weinberger, the author, is not speaking of the state of your bedroom, but the state of knowledge.

He contends that the internet has fundamentally changed the nature of knowledge, at least in the world of science. Paper has limits on how much can be printed, so some topics are not published. Additionally, within articles that are published, they generally cannot release all the data that led them to their conclusions. We have discussed the first in class a lot, and the second has also been touched on. But I think that in the realm of science it has perhaps even more ramifications that in historical papers. While history is more than full of facts, scientific experiments and data take up a lot of room to just present, much less explain. This would severely limit authors ability to talk about everything that led to their conclusion - and it can be a lot. As the author noted, Charles Darwin wrote "a two-volume work to establish a single fact: they [barnacles] are crustaceans."

But a new concept that he introduced was that "printed matter does not link." Which means that the author "has to cram everything the reader needs into one volume" and must paraphrase and quote with great brevity. As we know, a quote is nothing without its context, and linking to the original really allows the reader to fully access that original context.

Weinberger then goes on to say that the internet has further changed understanding of knowledge from "a set of coordinated definitions based on essential differences and similarities." Why? Because the internet has shown us that "we don't agree, and we can't let that stop us." So now, multiple understandings of the classifications of barnacles can exist with in one database, and scientists with vastly different opinions can contribute. And yes, the author was referring to the understanding of knowledge in science, the supposed world of objective facts and simple truths. Obviously, this is not the case - and perhaps the internet is what will bring many of us to realize this.