Search Engines & Internet Information

No one can deny that the Internet provides a huge amount of information at the fingertips of anyone who has access to a connected computer. Search engines (eg. Google; Yahoo; Bing, etc.) are how we find the information we need on the world wide web. The results that come up are lists of files or directories that we can look at to see which resource would provide the best information. 
There’s no doubt this makes doing research for a college paper much easier than it was in the days of thumbing through the catalog of index cards at the local library, and then searching through the rows of books to find something useful. However, with so much information available, you do have to make sure you look through the lists carefully and get reliable sources. 
Getting news online is important, because you can check the facts against the opinions of some clearly biased news sources (like Fox), and see whether or not what they are claiming is actually true. The information is usually more up to date than print newspapers, and more detailed than television. This access has caused some problems for the print news media. If they weren't able to compete with online sources, they went out of business. You can also search for other perspectives, from outside the U.S., such as the BBC, if its not be available on television or in print. It's interesting to hear what other countries have to say about us. This is a problem for countries like China, where the government tries their best to restrict the information that their citizens have access to. We saw how access to information is also helping people in some Arab countries replace their dictatorships with democracy. In my class on Nazi Germany, we’re learning how Hitler tried to restrict access to information and any conflicting views by burning books. The novel, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, was about a future, dystopian society where having books was outlawed, and if found, they were burned.
It’s more difficult to restrict Internet information, for people who have computers or I-phones, power, and connection to the World Wide Web, but making use of Internet search engines is clearly dependent on having access to technology in the first place.