Computers have given us access to lots of information. Let me correct that…tons of information. You can google anything and something will come up…even if its oddball and alarmist. As a result, we can make ourselves look smart on our social networking sites by linking an article to our account. This isn’t a bad thing. It seems like most of us would rather link photos and videos to their page anyway. But try linking to an article from the American Psychological Association and see if it is read by your friends…but it might be liked.
But is liking information the same as knowing it?
Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self.
–Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?
How can anyone know anything when what you read on the internet can be obsolete in less than 24 hours? Ultimately, this can make you feel like you don’t know anything (most of us) or you can become like a tornado chaser–trying to stay connected to a story as it morphs, changes and sometimes leaves destruction in its wake (because sometimes stories are wrong.)
This is different from knowledge.
Knowledge is something you contemplate; that you compare and contrast; that you analyze, start over and analyze again. In the process, you develop some research techniques and mental acumen…over time. You develop something that becomes obvious when you talk: the ability to speak authoritatively on a subject. Now you can still be wrong but at least you know your topic. Knowing a great deal about something does not make it truth. But it seems like the internet militates against the ability to establish a meta-narrative, a grand story that can make sense of smaller stories in a particular context. Grand stories are only possible when we believe in traditional notions of power and authority.
And the truth is, we don’t. Most of us view power and authority negatively although it is used to govern so many people, things, place and situations around us.
So how do we know when someone REALLY knows something when information is everywhere and the authoritative structures that governed credentials and expertise are breaking down?
The 
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