by Ashish P.

In response to the video "Nothing's Happening"

One one hand, the video shows us how much less dependent we have become on libraries and books and how we have come to an age where instead of finding a book about a topic, we can just search the topic on the internet. There was a time about 10-15 years ago where the only "scholarly" sources that existed were from professionally written books and textbooks. Now we have entered a new age where those books are seemingly useless considering that I could find the same, if not even more useful, information on the internet.

On the other hand, this video shows us how unreliable and seemingly useless books and textbooks have become. Text books, like the one shown in the video, only offer a few short sentences about a certain topic. In our World History textbook, the great philosopher, Socrates, was described in one small paragraph. If I were to search the same topic on the internet, I would not only get an enormous bundle of information about Socrates, but I would also discover minor things about him that were not included in a textbook. Things like: his last name, his family, his dog's name, his exact birth date, and so on. Books have become obsolete as of now. Even with simple things like this Ning, we can have a class discussion... at home! With online technologies like Zoho, the Ning, or the Wiki, we can not only find useful information, we can turn in our homework at home; we can ask questions from home; we can hang out with friends at home. So many possibilities have been opened just because of what the internet has done for our education.