Re: [ARSCLIST] Zits cartoon strip (trying to get back to matters archival)

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Miller" <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Re: [ARSCLIST] Zits cartoon strip (trying to get back to matters archival)
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Lou Judson wrote:
> > On the other hand, kids these days are able to search but barely to
> > reason...
> I assume you mean the ability to discriminate? How does one tell the good
> from the bad and how do you tell what is "real" and what is not in the
> digital world.
>
> While this may be a reach...one other aspect of digital information that
> is not considered as often is the notion of authenticity. We have so many
> untrue emails floating around that there are sites which question the
> authenticity of those "myths." Audio is not immune to such
> considerations...we had the Chopin cylinder and more recently the "sound"
> from the etchings on some pottery.
>
> While you can't always trust what is printed on the label, at least there
> is something to look at...yet, with digitized information...what do we
> have that can be used for authentification?
>
First, we don't really have anything (except our own personal
sense of suspicions). Anybody with a few dollars (or Euros, or
Zlotys, or Hooflungdings...) can put a web site on the Internet,
and once there it can be found by search engines. There are not
only sites which distribute falsehoods through ignorance...
there are many which do so in order to promote a specific
cause, religion, idea, usw.!

Worse yet, the young people who are using the Internet to
research essays or term papers (or just to look for
information) do NOT have the life experience to recognize
fact from cleverly edited fiction! In researching Ontario
history, I discovered that the Orange Lodge still exists
(albeit with minimal importance and credibility) and is
still as violently and virulenty anti-Catholic as they
were a century and more ago!

And "bad" web sites look pretty well like "good" web sites...

...stevenc
http://users.interlinks.net/stevenc/