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Everything I Know, The Internet told me

Just the other day, I learned that it’s possible to jump out of an airplane and — with the proper equipment, of course — glide like a flying squirrel for up to two miles. Two miles. Seriously. The Internet told me.

All you need is an airplane, a parachute, a flying squirrel suit and a pair of 200-horsepower jet engines small enough to strap to your legs. (A few swigs of bourbon probably wouldn’t hurt either.)

Basically, you bail out of an airplane at 20,000 feet, spread your arms and turn the engines on. When you run out of gas, you simply pull the chute and drift comfortably to the ground. At least that’s all the guy on YouTube did. It seemed like the greatest idea ever.

I might have tried it myself, but then I saw another video from which I learned that it’s possible to parachute off a steep dam and — with the proper equipment, of course — plummet like a sack of bricks, destroying every bone in your body.

Thank god for the Internet.

Like a Magic 8-Ball, it has an answer for everything. But unlike a Magic 8-Ball, the Internet knows what the hell it’s talking about. I can ask “What is the atomic mass of niobium?”” and the Internet unhesitatingly shoots back “92.906 amu.””

In seconds, the Internet can tell you the phone number of the nearest pizza shop, the gross domestic product of Nicaragua or the 11th-highest-grossing film in the history of French cinema.

This instant access to information has profoundly changed the way we operate from day to day. For everyone with access to a computer, handwritten letters are a thing of the past. The Yellow Pages are obsolete. Not long ago, drivers used oversized atlases to plan car trips, but online mapping programs have sent road maps the way of the bandwagon — used in metaphor more often than in real life.

And those are just some of the everyday uses; the Internet permeates our academics and politics as well. A study by the Pew Internet Project determined that at least 71 percent of online teens (between the ages of 12 and 17) relied on the Internet as the major source for school projects or reports. Another study from the same project found that college students get more of their political news from the Internet than from anywhere else.

College students in particular, the report stated, are likely to be aware of political-themed Web logs. And indeed, for the past several years, professional bloggers have crept out of the purely political arena and into almost every industry and interest group imaginable. A result of this is that the average Internet user has easy access to extensive information and opinions on very specific subjects that print and media journalists simply don’t have the resources — or the gristle — to cover.

And while the Internet makes it far easier to pick and choose what news we consume, the Pew project found that for people of all ages, use of the Internet provides a broader base of information than broadcast media.

“Internet users do not burrow themselves into informational warrens where they hear nothing but arguments that support their views,”” Pew senior analyst John Horrigan wrote in a press release. “Instead, Internet users are exposed to more political points of view and more arguments against the things they support.””

But these great strengths of the Internet are also its greatest liabilities. Free access to the Internet means that a wide variety of information, ideas and opinions can be transmitted almost instantly. But a wide variety of inaccurate information, bad ideas and faulty opinions are transmitted just as fast.

The ability to blog without the fear of financial or editorial reprisal emboldens savvy writers to tackle subjects that other outlets might be reluctant to touch, like the controversial remarks Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) made in support of Strom Thurmond — which disappeared from the mainstream news fairly quickly, only to be kept alive by bloggers, eventually costing Lott his Senate seat. But limited editorial oversight comes with the bitter pill of inaccuracy.

Newspapers — or any for-profit media outlet — have to deal with the wrath of their subscribers at the end of the day, which is an important check in the editorial process. Independent bloggers, who typically make their bacon based on the number of page hits their site gets, face no such restriction.

And in the rush to break stories as fast as possible, accuracy and depth are often sacrificed, to our great loss.

Consider the police Tasering of a student at UCLA, which sparked hundreds of angry responses on YouTube’s forums and independent blogs — in both directions — long before the video’s context made it into the news. For many posters, what had happened in the minutes before the Tasering was irrelevant. This is a dangerous road down which to head.

An Internet research firm reported earlier this month that the average consumer will abandon a Web site if it takes more than four seconds to load. Hopefully our attention span for news reporting is a little bit longer.

Even if users have the proper equipment, the Internet is only as smart as the people who use it.

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