By: Michael Francisco

14 Nov. 2002 Internet Epistemology: How the Internet is changing the way we live and think.

If it's not on the internet, does it really exist? Probably not. If you can't find the answer to a question using Google, then perhaps it's not worth knowing. Three in the morning, you want to buy an out of print book? No problem. The internet has everything, or so it seems…

The medium of the internet is fundamentally changing the way we view the world. Stealing a page from the playbook of Neal Postman, I contend that the internet is changing our epistemology in ways that are only starting to become clear.

Remember that movie "The Matrix"? Well, the internet is fast approaching the kind of information capacity that Tank used in the movie. Recall the scene in which Trinity needed to learn to fly the helicopter. She called up Tank and politely asked that he find flying instructions for the helicopter. Tank, consulting a beefed up version of Google, and found the obscure information in a few seconds. Far from science fiction, this kind of information searching ability is well on its way. In a minute or less, a well skilled 'net college student can find just about anything. The following are only brief sketches of some prominent changes we have downloaded from the net.

Drudge Ontology
There is a tendency to believe that if something isn't on the internet, it doesn't really exist. For example, on September 11th I vividly remember where I was when I heard that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. Working on a paper in my room, my roommate interrupted to tell me the news, after which I immediately checked the Drudge Report. There was no word of the incident on Drudge, so I doubted that anything had actually happened. Only five minutes later when I bothered to walk down to the lobby TV did I truly believe what had happened. It was long after the fact that I realized the significance of my instinct to consult the internet to verify that something had happened.

The Drudge ontology extends beyond news. If an organization doesn't have a website, it probably doesn't exist either. As more and more organizations establish themselves on the internet, our tendency to consult the virtual world to verify existence will only grow. In dark days before everyone had internet access, we would have never thought there could be one place to consult for the existence of basically anything.

Bible.com Expectation
Ask almost anyone who has used bible.com to look up a verse and you'll likely find that they found the website by guessing. The availably of almost any type of information, and most of it for free, has led us into expecting certain things from the internet. We all expect that the bible text is online, fully searchable, in multiple translations - and for free. If there's something worth knowing, it ought to be on the internet. Information is no longer a privilege, it's expected.

Amazon.Commerce
You can buy anything on the internet, and for cheap. We have come to expect that anything and everything is available to us with just a few clicks of the mouse. Forget browsing the stacks at Barnes and Noble, we expect to find, and purchase, just the book we want in two minutes or less - at 3:54 in the morning. The fact is, almost anything imaginable is for sale somewhere on the internet, and we have changed our living habits accordingly. Buying books will never be the same. One might even begin to wonder where in the bricks and mortar bookstore are the convenient reviews for each and every book. Answer: they are on the internet.

Google Work Ethic
Many 'Net Gen-ers have formed an interesting habit of consulting "the internet" for answers to just about any and every question. Wonder how to interpret the "Before Sunrise" chapter of Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"? Check 'the internet.' The way in which we think and speak of 'the internet' as a single entity for consulting indications a significant shift in epistemology. Unlike 'the Library' of lore, the internet, in all its gigabytes of glory, can be searched for key words or phrases, at all hours of the night.

Interestingly, the answers to found on 'the internet' could be found on dead tree, but not nearly as quickly and only after investing time reading. We have become lazy. Information has been cheapened. Indeed, the internet has put much information on the clearance rack - permanently. This may be good, but it also may be bad in the ways that we tend to seek simple answers now instead of spending time searing old style and reflecting about issues. We have grown impatient when we want an answer, and we are usually able to find the answer without doing any additional reading in the area. Perhaps we should be scared by the power of Google, instead of awed.

Case in point, some of the younger members of The 'Net Generation have grown up without realizing that books have an index, not a search box. Just imagine how nice books would be if they had a search function! Interestingly, one could speculate, eventually many books and especially older books will be on the internet for us to search until our hearts content. The problem is, how do you cite those blasted internet sources?

Perseus Potential
Got Perseus? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you probably don't study Greek or Latin, because if you did - you would know about Perseus. An amazingly powerful and free resource, Perseus centralizes most Greek and Latin texts and allows the user to simply click on the word to learn the form and definition. I conjecture such centralized information on the internet will only increase as government funding continues to get involved. Perhaps over time similar centralized websites could gain a good enough reputation to be cited with the credibility of good ol' fashion hardbacks.

The lack of permanence does present a problem though. The current convention of citing the full URL in a footnote simply doesn't work. Links go bad. Unlike really dead paper sources, stuff on the internet just disappears.

In conclusion, all these issues could be judged as either advantages or disadvantages in the long run. Rather than winning the race to become the first fool to naysay the internet, I intend to spark further reflection on the subject. Don't get me wrong, I use the internet more than most, but that doesn't mean that I think all the long-term consequences of this radically different media will be positive. With the transition from oral culture to written culture, we lost the ability to memorize. I only hope we don't lose more important abilities as we transition to the digital culture….