Round 3. Souls v Xtrozero: Throwing the Book at the Internet

The topic for this debate is "The internet is inferior to print media because too much of the information available online is less reliable".

Souls will be arguing the pro position and will open the debate.
Xtrozero will argue the con position.

Each debater will have one opening statement each. This will be followed by 3 alternating replies each. There will then be one closing statement each and no rebuttal.


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In the decade of the 90's, high speed networks, specifically the internet were taking off in the world as the next generation of communication transfer. The application of the internet into various fields, has proven itself highly successful. Today, almost anything from shopping, entertainment and news can all be accessed via the use of this highly effective network of information exchange. One of the most successful applications to date is that of the media outlets. Mainstream media outlets have dominated the exchange of information through out the world with the use of printed materials. Although the emergence of the television impacted the use of printed media, still, newspapers, magazines and books hold a significant foothold on the spread of information. This foothold is now being threatened after the internet has been implemented for civilian purposes, and not just military anymore.

With this rise of high speed networks, the internet, another phenomena started to take form. In today's world, with the high speed of information exchange, the average individual has now been empowered with the ability to create their own personal website at just the click of a button. For everyone in this world, there exists a "cyber dimension", sort of speak, parallel to our physical reality, where any individual can take up multiple online personalities and go shopping, dating, gaming, voice their opinions, they can create their own businesses, and they can even make their own news outlets. At first glance this looks like a very good idea, but take a second look and consider the risks involved.

The importance of a reliable source is evident in any piece of information that one receives. Through time media outlets have worked very hard to establish themselves as a reliable source. Unfortunately, it is self evident that even the most established reliable sources today, can and will be corrupted at any given time, and the purity of the information being transmitted will be soiled with misinformation and lies. This factor has prompted what is referred to as "indie", short for "independent". The independent movement has prompted scores of self made journalists, writers, entrepreneurs, artists, authors, teachers, directors, video editors, and even law enforcers. The independent movement exists to counter the lies spread by corporate media outlets and their limiting guidelines for content approval. For the debate, please focus only on independent journalists and media artists, then ask your selfs, can these independent sources of electronic media information be trusted any more than corporate, mainstream printed media outlets?

Throughout this debate I will show you, the audience, that the benefits obtained with the more rapid, electronic spread of information do not necessarily outweigh those of a more, tangible, printed source of information when it comes to global news content. I will show that by providing any given individual the ability to express their opinions, ideas, and agendas faster, and less expensive than ever before, it gives the ability for these individuals to relay misinformation, and made up "fact" much faster and less expensive than ever before. I will show that the internet is inferior to print media because too much of the information available online is less reliable and it allows individuals to spread unsubstantiated information much faster and less expensive than ever before, whether it be willingly or otherwise.

I would like to say thanks once again to Vagabond for the time and effort he has put into this debate to make it happen, and I would also like to wish my very capable opponent good luck.

The topic for this debate is "The internet is inferior to print media because too much of the information available online is less reliable", and I’m going to prove this statement is false, but first we need to examine just what we are debating.

We will be debating ‘The internet” as a whole just as the statement refers to, and this will be compared to “print media” nothing more or nothing less. There are too many assumptions dealing with both of these forms of communication, and the first one is the internet is made up of amateur blogs and mindless posts from a vast array of people from around the world, and though a small part of it is, I will not only show that everything printed is also available on the internet in electronic form, but also that these vast forms of communication whether full of correct information or falsehoods adds to the internet’s over all worth as a pure source of communication.

The other assumption is that print media is correct or reliable and I will dwell on the fact that this is not true since print is about as reliable as the internet, or even less reliable, and much more insidious since print media tends to lead a person down a false direction that it must be totally correct since it is in physical printed

As we explore these two areas of communication we will also need to determine just what is meant by the word “inferior”. I am sure my opponent will jump down the direction that the internet is chock full of unreliable information, but even if that was the case we need to understand that what we are actually dealing with here is two forms of communication, and what each of these provide to us all in the process of communication will ultimately determine their inferiority.

The Internet, which was originally created for academic and research purposes has expanded to every home in the world that has access to it. This doesn’t mean that the academic and research part has gone away or diminished in the least, and so the basic function of the internet is still there, but just as in reading print media there are no filters physical or electronic that separate the truth from the fiction. I could just as easily read an article about “Bat Boy” in the printed media Weekly World News as I could Google it and get 287,000 hits. In both cases Bat Boy lives but only on the internet do I get a rich flow of information that can also explain it is a fabricated story. In either case there is no electronic or physical filter to show me Bat Boy does not live, but there is something we need to use when we read anything in print of any form, and that is critical thinking. As stated at
ISOC.ORG

This truth applies as well to all other communication media, not only the Internet. Perhaps the World Wide Web merely forces us to see this more clearly than other media. The stark juxtaposition of valuable and valueless content sets one to thinking…We must evaluate and select…

Isn’t this true for any form of communication?

With the sheer vastness of the internet it allows us to evaluate and select information in an unparallel amount that is seamlessly updated when needed and not in the “next edition” as printed media is done that could be next year or never.

To get back to the basics, this all means is communication, and to communicate in a way that not only allows a person to read and critically filter the most up to date information from the greatest minds on the subject, but also from a huge pool of information that many others have added too is something that printed media just cannot hope to even come close to. When you can only gather research that tends to come from just a few individuals who maybe experts or not, but is surly outdated, and without the luxury of having what would equate to thousands of classmates type inputs from many other sources is truly an inferior process.

The total amount of false information on the internet is meaningless in determining the value of this electronic media because of the simple fact that correct information is as easily attainable and usable too, and as we dig deeper into this subject this will become very apparent.

Souls has reserved the right to use his extention on this post if necessary. It will be applied as necessary if he is late. The 24 hour limit for extentions in this round will be applied.

Souls 24 hour extention has expired. Xtrozero may post again.

Let’s just jump right to the point that this statement "The internet is inferior to print media because too much of the information available online is less reliable” is not only false but utterly ridicules. The reason I find it so ridicules is that it relies on so many assumptions that I have a hard time figuring out where to start. For this to be even remotely true we would need to assume these statements below are truisms.

1. Too much information is a bad thing.
2. The numbers game actually means something.
3. Accurate information is harder to find than inaccurate information on the internet.
4. Time/effort is not a factor.
5. Reliability is not time sensitive.
6. The need to use critical thinking is not needed for printed media.
7. Reliable institutions somehow become less reliable on the internet.

These seven assumed truisms are a good start to show just how false the statement for this debate actually is. In my opening statement I used the silly story of the Bat Boy to show a case where printed media can be as ridicules as anything available on the internet, and though it was just one story in printed media with some further recurrence of the same storyline I also got 531,000 hits using Google. Under first observation one would think I just instantly provided a win for my opponent since one false statement is a little less than 531,000, but then we would also need four or five of my “assumed truisms” above to be actually true for that to be the case.

Looking a little deeper than just a numbers game we find a totally different picture. Out of those 531,000 hits 237,000 are about Bat Boy the musical, and there is also a huge amount of information about the culture this false tabloid story has created. If I was going to write an article about Bat Boy, and I had just printed media as my source, my article would be based solely on a hand full of fake stories, and not the culture or the musical that would enhance those fake stories that only the internet can provide. Even though this is a rather silly story it disproves my number one and two assumed truisms.

In the debate statement it suggests that accurate information gets lost in a sea of inaccurate information thus making the internet inferior, and I would agree if that were the case. If we look at a random topic of “The Constitution” that has much in printed media and compare this to the internet we get these results. I get close to ten million hits in Google, but the very first hit at the top of the list is here. I challenge my opponent to find a printed source(s) that has more information with richer detail, and from a more reliable author, oh and find it in less than 10 seconds.

As I continue to look at my 10 million hits on this subject to see if I can easily gain accurate information from a source that would be considered very reliable, or as reliable as anything in printed media, I simply look at where the information is coming from. To know the source or author is very important to determine the credibility of the information and whether I look at a book to see who wrote it or I look to see who owns the website they are one and the same. As I scan the list in the first 20 hits I see many .Gov, .cornell.edu, .yale.edu, and .org for states, teachers, students etc.

As I scan the next 50 links I see more major universities and state constitutions and then finally the farther I get I start to see more political and other type options on The Constitution that could be unreliable. For one person using print media as their source they would be hard press to even come close to this amount of reliable information. One person could spend an entire life time across all 50 states researching what I can find in a day with no less reliability for me in the sources that provide the information. As anyone can see even if nine million of these hits were totally unreliable it matters little for the ease to gather creditable information is undeniable, and this shows us my number three and four assumed truisms are false too.

In my opponent’s opening statement he suggests that the ability to update information with quickness, ease and low cost is a bad thing and that it directly reduces the quality or reliability of the information. He also suggests that “opinions” on the internet are inferior to those in printed media.

Since I have demonstrated that the source or author is what determines the credibility then the ease at which they update their material is actually a great advantage over printed media that either never updated or is done in revisions yearly or longer. Also, incorrect information written in a book might as well be written in stone, but for an electronic source it is just a simple edit when found.

When one talks about “opinions” they are starting down a slippery slope indeed, and I’m sure my opponent feels that a book about Anne Collier’s opinions is much more reliable than the million of opinions on the same subject on the internet. The difference here is you can either read the opinion of just one person (who just might be a right wing radical) or you can read the opinions of thousands of people that are extremely diverse from each other.

This shows that my number five and six assumed truisms are actually false along with the rest of them for the efficiency of the internet to update or provide new material has great advantages over the slow, expensive and limited media print options, and that critical thinking is always needed no matter what type of sources you use to gain knowledge, especially when dealing with opinions.

This takes me to my final assumed truism that “Reliable institutions somehow become less reliable on the internet”. Even though this is obviously not true, I think this simple example will be adequate proof to show how false it is. In education, using the APA format, you can find how to list “electronic references” from every major school in the country, and since electronic reference meets the standards of very college or university in the nation then it is good enough to say the reliability is there.

I put forth a challenge to my opponent to find one topic that is actually more reliable in print than on the internet. The standards of the internet rest in the same intuitions as those in printed media, and the speed to update that information alone makes it more reliable than media print. The ease and speed at which to retrieve electronic media is a truly superior method than the antiquated physical print form that shows us that not only does a person need reliable information but also away to efficiently retrieve it.

Souls has U2U'd me, and regrets to announce that he must concede on the grounds that changes in his schedule make him unable to continue.

Xtrozero will advance to the final round.