READING ASSIGNMENT
Title of the Article : Learning, Teaching, and Researching on the Internet : A Practical Guide for Social Scientists
Author : Stuart D. Stein
Publisher : Addison Wesley Longman
We are inclined to view the Internet as a vast repository of information. There are millions of data files that can be readily accessed: text, graphic, moving images, binary and audio. We are witness to the exponential growth in the volume and range of publicly accessible materials available in the Internet servers. Having said this, my first critique on the use of online media is, no one is in a position to quantify the overall volume of data much more to qualify the information being uploaded. Is there someone in authority who can conduct quality control in the Internet? I guess not… “Garbage in, garbage out”. This could have been more tolerable if every person who would like to contribute is also quality conscious. On the aspect of information retrieval, one has to practice patience and attention to details to aim for optimum research skills.
Second, every second of the day, files are being uploaded, deleted, moved or altered. This now highlights the posterity issue of documents in the online media. We don’t know how long technologies of today would persist, if systems of today can still support what is there in the future. This again has a huge impact on how we can access information if all the repositories are intangible. How can we claim progress in information storage and retrieval if the volatility of sources is looming around us?
These two things are on top of my list. On final note, there are numerous advantages of online media but we can only appreciate their worth if we can see through their flaws. After all, we claim that we live in modern times but this too entails, that we should have a vision of perpetuity.
