Essay Outline

How has the growth of the internet affected the concept of truth within our society?

The explosion of the Internet throughout the world has ultimately changed the way in which society can communicate. It has taken mass communication to an entirely new level and inundated the common person with information. In theory it is a utopian ideal, one that is helping to close the gap between societal classes, by empowering an ever widening audience with a bounty of easily accessible knowledge.

Yet in reality this technology may be closer to dystopia. Whilst the internet has become a sea of readily available knowledge, its use as a platform to share ideas and information is ultimately corrupting the reliability of fact. In theory, the internet allows any man and his dog to post information, eg. in the form of a website or a blog. It has caused a technological change and unlike the first media age, here in the second there are very few restrictions to production and transmission.

The amount of information available is now so large, that it is difficult to determine fact from fiction, and what is true from what is false? Post-modern and relativist thinking has also become popular within Generation Y, blurring the concept of truth even further. Within these schools of thought a fact is viewed as merely one person’s version of the truth, to which millions more versions may be presented; any of which being no more acceptably correct than the other.


Points to expand:
- Truth (creation- subjectivity-context of writer as an influence)
- Knowledge (creation)
- Statistical (growth of the internet)
- Blogging (free reign / share ideas, truths-versions)
- Wikipedia (blind leading the blind)
- Old Media-extinction (books / newpapers redundant)
- Google- search (popular links / advertisement affecting searches)
- Reliability- (taught in schools? Question information enough? Users must regulate/rate their own information-cross-reference. Recognise types of sites- eg. edu, com)
- Educational tool? (Better educated, knowledgeable nation or worse?)

Sources:
· Keen, Andrew (2007) “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy”, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, Great Britain

· Battelle, John (2005) “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture”, Penguin Group, New York

· Stockwell, Steve (2008) “Lecture Notes”, Faculty of Arts, Griffith University, Retrieved on 10/05/08 from https://learning.griffith.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_55255_1&frame=top

· Reporter’s Without Borders (2005) “Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents”, Retrieved from http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

· Poster, Mark (1995) “Postmodern Virtualities”, Retrieved on 10/05/08 from http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/internet.html

· Fisher, Dana R. & Wright, Larry Michael (2001) “On Utopias and Dystopias: Toward an Understanding of the Discourse Surrounding the Internet”, Retrieved on 10/05/08 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2001.tb00115.x