If You Believe In the Internet, You’ll Buy Just About Anything

We have become, as a society, addicted to the Internet.
Don’t believe me? Try to find the answer to a question any other way. For example, you can try to use an encyclopedia.
(Encyclopedia.  You remember.  A collection of books that cover a lot of topics.)
The problem with being addicted to the information we can find on the Internet is … you can’t always believe what you see.
A while back, our esteemed publisher Johnny Kuykendall was looking up the lovely Harris County town of Waverly Hall on Google. He excitedly called me into his office to show me what came up in his search.
“Jack! Did you know there’s a listing of the top ten hotels in Waverly Hall on Google?” he exclaimed.
Sure enough, there on his Google search was an item that said, “Top 10 Hotels in Waverly Hall, Ga.”
I live in Waverly Hall.  There aren’t any hotels, much less ten of them, much less any that would be listed in a Google search. (If there are any, I haven’t heard about them.)
Waverly Hall is a beautiful little town, and I really enjoy living there. It’s not so small that both sides of the sign say “City Limits,” and yet it’s not so big that you get lost trying to find the gas station.
Despite what Google says, Waverly Hall doesn’t have ten hotels. And when you click on the “Top Ten Hotels,” you get taken to a site from LaFayette, Alabama, anyway.
While Johnny and I had a good laugh at the idea, the question started forming – how much do we depend on the information we get from the Internet?
As it turns out, we depend on it for quite a lot.
Need to know the answer to a question? Google it.
Want to know what your friends and family are up to?  Check them out on Facebook.
Looking for the latest poll numbers for your favorite politician?  Check out your favorite news organization’s website.
Trying to find a job? Go to your state’s Department of Labor website. (Heaven forbid you should use the Classified Ads in a newspaper any more!)
Want to read a newspaper but don’t want to shell out a buck? Go online and read it – as much of it as you can for free, anyway.
But how much of the information you’re getting is accurate? That, friends, is the $64,000 Question.
And sadly, the answer is … not all that much is accurate.
Let’s use a great example, that online fount of knowledge known as Wikipedia.
Back when I was in my last eight or so years of teaching, I would assign papers to my students to research and write, and many times they would use Wikipedia as a “primary source” – one from which they get first-hand information.
I began to ask them not to use Wikipedia at all, or only as a springboard to primary sources at most. “Why?” my students plaintively asked of me. “Wikipedia is so easy and convenient!”
So I performed a little demonstration. Placing the Wikipedia home page on my computer screen, I selected a topic, went to the article, then hit the “edit” button and typed in a silly sentence that had nothing to do with the entry at all.
Then, I clicked “save.”
Going out of the encyclopedia for a moment, I said, “Here’s why.”
I went back into Wikipedia and returned to the topic I’d edited. My edit was still there, a permanent part of that particular entry. (Yes, I deleted it and restored the entry.)
“That’s why.  You cannot trust what’s in there to be accurate.”
Nor can you really trust what you find anywhere else on the Internet to be 100% accurate.
And what information is in there is not secure.
Anyone who wants to do something nefarious with the data on the Internet will get in there and do it. Firewalls? Bah! Encryption? Child’s play. Password protection? Poppycock!
The Internet has made the world much, much smaller – it’s a delight to be in contact with long-lost friends and relatives; it’s wonderful to find the answer to anything you want to find; it’s exciting to go into a video site and watch shows or events you thought you’d never see again.
But all of that comes with a price – the price of accuracy, the price of trust.
My Dad used to say, “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.”
To that, I would add, for the benefit of my daughter and grandchildren …
“And almost none of the Internet.”