Gersemi wrote:"Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore"
Quite the reverse! There's extensive peer-review on t'net, and misinformation is rarely so subtle as when written by professionals in the print (or broadcast) media. And an unprecedented range of ways to verify something. Though you have to be alert.
Just look at how Wikipedia gains grudging respect even from those who would assume it a wasteland - and comes out well in serious academic studies.
Down-the-pub[1] remains a place where stories true or false can spread, though even there the 'net now offers opportunities to verify something.
On the subject of t'net, some of us had a different view. Here's from what I wrote in 2006, reflecting what had motivated me to move the focus of my work to developing the net - including my first websites (both work and fun) and online software in 1995.
One of the tasks I’ve been through in recent weeks is to fill in the Front Matter for my [new] book. One page of that is for the Dedication.
Any book you pick up has one. And it’s always the same kind of thing: “to my dear wife and children”, bla bla bla. Really? Your nearest and dearest may be an inspiration to you, or a terror you wouldn’t dare not dedicate it to, but how many of them know, or want to know, the first thing about your subject?
After giving it a little thought, my nearest and dearest would just be embarrassed by such an obviously irrelevant gesture. So would I. But since the space needs filling, I’ve given it a very brief version of my dream, as set out at greater length in my manifesto:
To all who share my dream, and are working to help make it happen ….
…. the dream of a world where your work, your colleagues, and your opportunities in life are not dictated by where you live, or how far you commute. Where the old-fashioned office of the 19th and 20th centuries has passed into history, along with its soul-destroying bums-on-seats culture and Dilbertian work practices. A world inclusive of those who cannot work in a standard office. A world inclusive of those who reject car-dependence, but embrace a full and active life. A world inclusive of those who seek to fit study and learning in to a busy life, yet have no accessible library, let alone university. Of those who are housebound ….
Our information infrastructure is poised to liberate us all. We who [read my book] are playing a small but exciting part in that. This work is dedicated to all of us!
[1] Or the coffee house, which was treated as deeply suspect in Enlightenment Europe for much the same reasons as the Internet today: who knew what depraved or subversive communications might be going on there?