We are living in the age of information and technology. This means that anything that we want to know is in reach of our fingertips. Once upon a time, it took hours to correctly find specific information we wanted. To find such information, we had to go to a library and search for days through the thousands of books on shelves. Now, we are able to go on our phones and just type what we want to know onto a web browser and the answer would appear right in front of our eyes. If you're really lazy, you can even just ask the virtual assistant on your phone (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, etc) and most of the time they'd lead you to an answer. Two common ways obtaining information online are Blogs and Wikis.
Blogs are regularly updated websites run by an individual person or a small group of people that are written with an informal or conversational style. Bloggers are people who posts blogs online about whatever they want to. People can now express their opinions and way of life through blogs. People can leave comments to motivate or criticize bloggers on their blogs. This leads to a sense of community for that would be difficult to find in the real world. One such example of people coming together in order to do good was in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid". BayRidgeTalk.Com was a blog that originated from Brooklyn which assisted in drug raids on 346 and 348 93rd street between Third and Fourth Avenues. People would discuss about their experiences in the neighborhood which allowed police to obtain enough information to eventually raid the two houses. “A group of people who did not know each other came together and traded information” said Mr. Miller who was a pet shop owner in the neighborhood. This blog allowed people to come together in order to solve a problem plaguing the whole neighborhood.
On the other hand, Wikis are websites where people collaborate in editing its content in a more formal or professional fashion. One of the largest and most used Wikis in the world is Wikipedia. The endless amount of information is a great resource for a lot of people, but it can lead to problems. One such problem was written in the article by The New York Times "A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?". Back in 2009, physchologists were angry because of the posting of a cheat sheet for the rorschach test. This was problematic because there was only 10 inblock plates and the purpose was for people to express what they personally saw through the subjective plates. However, if the people taking the test already saw the cheat sheet on Wikipedia, it completely renders the test meaningless and according to the article, "To psychologists, to render the Rorschach test meaningless would be a particularly painful development because theere has been so much research conducted to try to link a patient's responses to certain psychological conditions". While there are advantages to Blogs and Wikis, there are also disadvantages to all of the information available online. People can come together to put drug dealers in prison or they can come together to help people cheat on a Rorschach test so it really needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The age of information and technology helped people build online communities and allowed people to quickly find anything they are searching for. It will never be perfect because people will always find a problem with such a vast and endless world of information, but the dramatic change of finding information from an hour to a minute is something that everyone would prefer.
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