In the past, knowledge was contained in books. Nowadays, knowledge is uploaded to the internet. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

Contrary to the ordinary method of writing books, most

knowledge

nowadays is put and stored on the internet. While

this

brings about several benefits

such

as the ease of

access

for most

people

as well as inviting discussions to take place, the untrustworthiness and intangibility of

such

sources are some of the undeniable drawbacks. Personally, I believe that the significance in the pros are much more impactful than the cons that

this

trend introduces. To start with, uploading

knowledge

online allows

people

to gain

access

to them at their own free will. As the availability of the internet becomes commonplace worldwide, so does the

access

to the majority of

knowledge

put online.

For instance

, it is considered a norm today to look up pieces of

information

in almost any field just through a few clicks on a web browser, whereas it used to take way more time and effort for

people

in the past to find them at libraries or reference books.

Moreover

, having

information

and ideas put online

also

creates room for discussions. The fact that anyone can upload their personal

knowledge

or views on different topics allows for debates to take place. The variety of stances or even opposing opinions on a given discussion offer countless opportunities for intellectual growth and improvements in communication skills.

Nevertheless

, the abundance of resources online comes with the uncertainty of referring to unreliable websites for

knowledge

. Since there are so many sites to choose from, it is more often than not that web users stumble upon pages that intentionally spread false

information

for malicious reasons.

This

has become an increasing concern as of late, especially during the pandemic when students are forced to turn to mostly unverified websites as their main source of

information

.

Moreover

,

this

is

also

an intangible way of storing

information

. Most

knowledge

in the past was likely to remain relatively unaltered after hundreds of years since they were either printed in books or carved in wood pieces.

However

, most

information

nowadays is encoded in order to be stored in online databases. Similar to any other electrical devices, these databases do run the risk of breaking down at any given point,

thus

erasing all the

information

within. Obviously,

people

who rely on them for both

knowledge

acquisition and storage will be heavily affected if

this

incident occurs. In conclusion, while uploading

knowledge

to the internet could mean potential misinformation or even loss of

knowledge

, I personally think that these downsides are completely outweighed by the advantages

such

as providing easy

access

to global web users as well as having important conversations online.