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The High Cost of Knowledge and Free Misinformation
How Knowledge Has Become a Commodity
Knowledge has always been one of the most valuable commodities in our society. Before the invention of the printing press by Guttenburg in 1436, knowledge was only accessible to those who could afford it before — but now thanks to online resources and free educational content from professionals across many fields this is no longer true.
Posting on forums like Reddit allows anyone with internet access to find information about anything they want or need to know without having any firsthand experience whatsoever. And this free information has become a commodity for many professionals who are now educating themselves and others with free content widely available on the internet. Why should we be concerned about this?
Like many folks, I use my smartphone not just for communication but as a source of information. The nightly news is a thing of the past for me — the information that I need is delivered up by the intelligence of the internet (compliments of Google).
Lately, I have been using the app Newsbreak to assist me with my news sourcing. For those of you who are not familiar, this app sources news stories from multiple sites on the internet. What I have noticed is a strange mix of what I called “vetted” news sources and…
