Have you ever been deceived by knowledge on the Internet?

When I search information for my research paper, sometimes I found wrong information I already known is shown on the Internet. If I don’t know that this knowledge is wrong, I’ll use this information into my paper and it will be the minus defect to get a low grade in my paper. Whenever I go through these experiences, I raise doubts that people really have ability to reproduce information on the Internet?


Nowadays it’s really easy to put people’s opinion or products’ information on the Internet and limited or erroneous information can circulate through Internet. Sometimes the knowledge on the Internet is of benefit to improve my information or my life by realizing the good information. However, in fragmenting culture, if we don’t spend much time to accumulate deeper knowledge by reading something – book, newspaper and so on – this information which circulates through Internet really have values to be known to others without any filtration? Is it truly possible to circulate the deep information without any basis of the knowledge about the specific fields? Even though UGC is the good method to increase the quantity of information, it would be possible to reduce the quality of information. How can we block to circulate below the level information on the Internet? In addition, in democracy is it indeed right to get the good knowledge without any effort to pursue the information which is a result of other’s effort?



On the other hand, many people use Internet as a method to check other’s review about the product before they buy something. This is helpful because the person who really uses that product gives the information only the view of the customer - what are merits and demerits of the product. However, how can we distinguish the information which can be faked by intent and find the correct information we want? Especially from my experience some sites and blogs which anyone can submit their review about all of product are more difficult to value the review because there are more possibility to invent information!

(This capture is the most famous site "Naver" in Korea where people can easily ask and answer about their curiosity. Anyone can use this site!)

In these days, we get out of the traditional way to learn the knowledge and information and try to pursue fragmenting culture that makes people can easily hold knowledge with others. However, I wonder how we can protect the quality of information which is truly reliable and deep knowledge. Do people just want to take the positive function of the UGC without me?