The most important technological invention from the end of 20th century is the Internet. Today, almost all of our communication relies on the Internet. No technology has influenced us as much as the Internet. It spreads across various domains such as education, research, e-commerce, business, entertainment and politics. In 1993, only 1 percent of the information flow was through the Internet. Today, more than 97 percent of the information flow is dominated by it.
The world’s first printing press was started by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. This event led to the beginning of the first information revolution in the world. Through the printing of books, people easily gained knowledge, and this led to an awakening in society. But still, many people had to order books from faraway places to read. Great men have undergone severe hardships in order to read books. Abraham Lincoln, who was an avid reader, used to travel to different places to read books in order to satiate his hunger for gaining knowledge. Great writers like H.G. Wells experienced great difficulties during childhood and could not afford to buy books.
The learning process was very difficult back in those days, and everyone did not have equal opportunities to become educated. In some countries like India, there was a time when society was divided into sections, and only a particular section had the right to read and gain knowledge. The process of gaining information was very individualized and lacked the transfer of knowledge among masses.
But today, the availability of the Internet has completely transformed the way reading has been done for centuries. Anyone with Internet access can read books online, download and upload new books, read on Wikipedia and search on Google for facts and latest information. As said by Harry Kroto, 1996 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, “The truth is that Google, YouTube and Wikipedia have revolutionized information access in the world.” He stated that Google has “revolutionized the search engine” and that Wikipedia became a “collection of everyone’s interests that has wiped out the encyclopedia almost overnight.”
Today, any information can be obtained at the click of a mouse. And we often consume the information at the same pace at which the fiber optic delivers into us. We must take into account that the sources from which we read are not always authentic. But the main problem lies with the way we read the information by searching on the internet. Many academicians complain that even though today’s generation is very fortunate to have search engines for any information they want, they often do not read it deeply and thoroughly. It is observed that we only restrict ourselves to facts and end results in reading content.
For example, in a calculus course, students can easily find integral tables on the Internet with predetermined derivations. But very few students show the curiosity to understand the derivations or even to solve them. Most of them just scroll down to the end result, which undermines the learning process. Students use Wolfram Alpha to solve their problems.
But again, the students’ problem-solving skills are hampered, as they do not do it on their own. Earlier, using paper books, students had to solve all the problems and read through the entire book to truly understand it. But the present generation lacks the patience to read the content for hours.
Our generation is blessed with a wonderful resource that was never available before. However, the best learning process is that used by past scientists, professors, writers and scholars who perused the entire content of textbooks thoughtfully and spent enough time reading information that it got into their nerves. Whatever be the source, the essence of learning and gaining knowledge is understanding the contents and making it simpler and better for all of us to understand.
