Greetings Readers,

Strap yourselves in, because this is likely to be a bit of a rant.

It is an inescapable fact that we are in the midst of one of those moments in history, which occur all-too-often, whereby the seething masses of humanity begin to buck against the intellectual gains of the previous generations.

We have seen it most notably in the political arenas of the Western nations, with comments from UK politicians that people, “…have had enough of experts.” or the rise of Donald Trump in the US against all reason and common sense. We see it also, in the increasingly vociferous voices of the religious minority who have lost significant ground over the course of the last two centuries to the advancement of science, and most importantly perhaps, we see it in the rise of pseudo-science, alternative medicine, or the half-baked rebuttals of scientific method couched in the language of conflict under the aegis of the people versus capitalism.

Whilst all of this is undoubtedly problematic, it is the latter in particular that I find really troubling.

A good example of this arose online this morning, with a good friend who works in the UK pharmaceutical and healthcare Industry attempting to rebut some appallingly misguided commentary on vaccinations. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the subject will know that there is an ongoing ‘debate’, primarily in the US, attempting to link various vaccinations to the rise in cases of autism. Unfortunately, whilst the original research making this claim was quickly shown to be little better than a sham (and the perpetrator an absolute charlatan), and there exists a significant body of peer-reviewed research to underscore this, the damage has been done, and the concept has entered the public consciousness and escalated out of all proportion.

But why?

Well, for my own part, I think the crux of the problem is this: It is the simple fact of the matter that, pre-Internet, if you wanted to understand an issue you had to do good old-fashioned book research. This invariably meant either purchasing the relevant materials (such as subject-specific books or journals) from a bookshop, or borrowing them from a library (be it public or otherwise).

The thing, however, with printed publications before the birth of the Internet is that they provided a certain guarantee of quality of information via a couple of in-built filters. Firstly, the majority of publishers would only print credible research/information, and secondly, mainstream book retailers (for the most part) would only carry books from credible publishers. Naturally, these two are also self-reinforcing; in most cases publishers who wanted their (non-fiction) books carried by mainstream bookshops worked hard to ensure the credibility of their materials, and bookshops likewise gained credibility by stocking reputable (non-fiction) publications. It made good business sense: A book is an investment, and you want to ensure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. That the information is valid.

Another side-effect of this process, is that the reader was also more wary about parsing their sources of information, and thus more discerning in what they used. Books are self-limiting: They can only contain so much information, and the only way of comparing and contrasting that information was by looking at other books. I should point out here, that I’m using ‘book’ as a catchall term to include journals and other printed materials (such as, to a lesser extent, newspapers and magazines). That information also has an expiration date: The information is only current at the point of publication, and the nature of copyright laws and the copyright information that must be printed in a book, allows the reader to make a informed choice about how current the information contained within it is. This is without the adding the obvious point, that it places a further onus on the publisher to ensure the validity of the information, as it has to stand the test of time.

HOWEVER a more important point in all of this is that, given the inherent mechanisms in place to aide in ensuring quality of information, this naturally led to the (somewhat valid) assumption that if you read a great deal, you were a learn’d person.

And this is where things start to go wrong…

When we add the Internet to this intellectual landscape and paradigm of knowledge, it ceases to be valid for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we have the obvious  problem that anyone, can now publish anything, at any time, without the same kind ‘bottlenecks’ filtering out dubious information. Then we have to factor in that anyone, can now access that ‘information’ at anytime. The Internet immediately makes redundant many of the checks and balances that worked to ensure that print media was more credible.

And it gets steadily worse the closer we look…

Internet retail also makes it much, much easier to deliver print media to the masses and in a variety of manners.

“But surely this is a good thing?”, I hear you cry – Not necessarily:

Perhaps the most obvious change is that publishers can now eliminate bricks and mortar retailers, and sell directly to their customers, reducing one step in the ‘chain of credibility’ (to coin a phrase). If we then take this further and couple it with the rise in print-on-demand infrastructure, publishers can now offer a range of publications of varying degrees of credibility and simply print what sells. We can then layer in other newer retail paradigms, such as the growth in what could best be described as ‘mass’ retailers, such as Amazon, where quantity of product is somewhat more important than quality and the customer alone is left to judge the latter property of the product – Non-Fiction, informational books no longer sell based on a chain of credibility, but on popularity, but in a culture of 24-hour availability where sensationalism drives the popularity of ‘information’ (or at least its visibility), credibility no longer becomes a prerequisite.

And I haven’t even touched on e-Books, which arguably take the concept of print-on-demand to its logical conclusion in the age of the Internet. Quite apart from increasing the ease with which publishers can negate the need for physical retailers, it also negates the need for publishers, coming full circle and returning to the idea that anyone, can publish anything, at any time.

BUT the real issue here, isn’t even all the problems outlined above, it’s the fact that in spite of all this, these changes, these new paradigms in publishing and the written word’s loss of credibility as a result,  we still assume that volume of reading equates to learning/wisdom. It doesn’t matter that the quality of what we’re reading might have deteriorated, or that our ability to parse what we’re reading has atrophied, we still make that assumption that reading equates to knowledge, with no other mechanisms required to ensure the credibility of what we’re reading, and thus the conclusions we come to as a result. Hence we arrive at the birth of the, frankly astonishing, “I read it on the Internet” culture.

We could add in other known iniquities here, discussing confirmation bias, how the nature in which the information we see and access on the Internet is shaped by the systems that are supposed to ease this process, inadvertently working against credibility; creating echo chambers and information bubbles, but for me at least, these issues pale in comparison to those outlined above, not least because they speak to a pressing need to address how we handle information in the digital age.

People often found, and still find it odd, that as a teacher specialising in Information and Communications Technology at primary level, I’m actually of the opinion that there is a worthwhile debate to be had, concerning limiting children’s access to the Internet (and Information Technology) in the primary phase (4-11 for those not familiar with the terminology): People need to learn to parse information, and working with older systems of information storage and presentation (i.e. books), develops the skills necessary to parse data and make informed choices about credibility in an information rich environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen schemes of work that try to tackle this whilst retaining access to the Internet and Information Technology, that try to deal with how to make sound judgements about information presented online, but they all tend to fail in the face of the simple fact, that you’re trying to close the gate after the horse has bolted: Chances are, by the time you start introducing this concept, children have already had considerable exposure to the Internet, and even when you begin tackling this in earnest at a rate of maybe one 45-60min session a week, they’re already wracking up a huge volume of hours of unfettered, unfiltered access to the Internet, an information-rich environment, with no real mechanisms to ensure credibility, and without the skills necessary to parse that information in an appropriate manner.

Thus, with all of this in mind, I can’t help but think that many of the ills of the Internet age, and the rise of the cult of ignorance, would be offset if people simply learned how to really read a book…