6. Information Acquisition And Preservation
Back in the day, acquiring information about an unfamiliar subject required either the discovery of a knowledgeable individual or a trip to the local library in search of one of the hefty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which could often have a negligible success rate because of size constraints and the dynamic nature of the world. A little internet start-up founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the nineties changed all of that. You might be familiar with it, its called Google. With the ability to search for anything and everything at the click of a button, individuals around the world can now learn about any subject of their choosing in a quick and efficient manner, either by typing it into the search bar offered on Googles homepage, browsing a broad source that covers almost every topic imaginable (such as Wikipedia) or looking at a more specialist one that focuses on a few subjects in overwhelming detail (ranging from the IMDB and TV Tropes to GameFAQs and Snopes). The internet doesnt just offer information in comprehensive fashion, it offers it instantaneously. People can now keep up to date on matters that affect or interest them without having to wait for the release of the next days newspaper or next months magazine. Given that nothing ever really seems to get deleted either, the internet is also an ongoing record of human history regardless of how much it continues to grow, individuals will always be able to access some obscure story from the earlier nineties, for instance, ensuring that almost anything we create today will never be lost to future generations.