The debate continues ...

... The Importance of Critical Judgment and The Siren Song of the Internet: Part I .

"As various of the contributors to the forum have mentioned, if only in passing, what is more important than the quantity or average quality of information that is available is what users of it do with it. Here is where the phrase “critical judgment” or some such usually makes its appearance. What we’d all like is to believe that most users employ keen critical judgment in seeking and assessing information. What we rather suspect is that they don’t."

That isn't what we'd like to think at all - and we don't think it. The issue from the dawn of civilization has been the nature of discourse. It's a perennial. Where the information or data resides is beside the point. How it used by whoever uses it has always been the fundamental issue. The point of all of this verbiage seems to be to disguise the main worry: that anyone can have access to the information, that gatekeepers are no longer able to keep the gates closed to those they deem unworthy of entrance. It still comes down to the experts know best. Well, read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's the Black Swan: They don't.