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No one will deny that the Internet has made the dissemination of information and knowledge increasingly much faster than before it was invented.  We essentially live in a new world although it is not necessary that we live in a new civilization. More people nowadays are moving from a real world to a virtual world. They spend more time doing research, chatting, shopping, reading news and entertaining themselves on the Internet. One way or the other, people become more dependent on the Internet. 

The Internet or the Web not only enables people to transmit information at instant but also stores massive information and data. This becomes obvious and beneficial especially for those who are seeking information, papers and data from the Web. For example, with a relatively low subscription fee almost all academic journals published in the developed countries today can be accessed from the Internet. Unpublished academic papers are freely accessible from the website of the authors. There are enormous sites providing free access of information, knowledge and data.  Students in Indonesia who are preparing their project papers can just log into the Internet and most likely will find the subject they are interested in and want to write about. These are only a few examples.

While the Internet can store a huge amount of information, does it really promote the advancement of knowledge?  Do people read more than before the Internet was present? Long time ago, when the television was invented, perhaps people asked the same question. The tube may stimulate people to think when they see real events presented before their eyes. But is it true so? People are likely thinking less than they used to. It's primarily because of television. We often heard the jargon “We live in an information economy”. Do we? People are reading less and they're certainly thinking less. So, when more people are using the Web to get more information, they are not necessary think more. In fact, we are already in information overload. No matter how much information the Web can dish out, most people get far more information than they can assimilate anyway.

While reading and viewing can involve thought and learning, it can also be highly passive activities. All of us have had the experience of reading a page and not being able to remember what was just discussed.  Information on the Web can stimulate thought.  Online newspapers can similarly stimulate thought but often only provide diversion. We may be living in information society but neither a thinking society nor society of reason and rationality.

Where do we stand?

Could information technology improve our knowledge? In a broader context, could it help our education?  It depends on where a nation stands. We have seen that the problems in our education today are enormous ranging from the low quality of teachers, poor curriculum and weak quality of graduates. There is an interaction between society and its technologies. Society creates technology and society is also created by technology. As Marx wrote long time ago, “in changing the technical world, man changes his own nature”.  But it is inevitable that technology cannot solve all the problems in education. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.  Sadly, the presence of the Internet might help degradation in the quality of students since it makes them to think less.

The free information and knowledge on the Internet poses a negative consequence. In a country where copyrights are a strange word and where the commitment to respect copyrights is illusion, the Internet could worsen the learning process.  For example, students could copy and paste papers from the Internet and claim them to be theirs.  Obviously, there is no extra knowledge produced from such practices. In developed countries, where copyrights are sacred things the negative effects of the Internet on knowledge advancement perhaps is little.  However, in our country such effects cannot be disregarded.

The other problem is the transition from printing to virtual knowledge. Before the Internet was invented, the developed countries have already lived in a reading and printing culture. In the US alone, thousands of new books were published every year. Libraries are everywhere with massive stock of books.  From elementary school, students are already taught to write essays and give speech in front of their class.  It is an expressive society in a sense that expressing their thought, either verbally or written, is a very important attitude. It is a part of their daily lives.

In reality, we haven’t lived yet in such culture. Reading books has not been a main menu in our society, let alone writing.  Even professors and teachers at universities and colleges have limited skills in writing. The number of books published per year is very low.  To make matter worse, our culture is not an expressive culture and our education does not encourage students to write and express their thought systematically.  We have minimum numbers of libraries and their book stocks are also very limited.

When developed countries move from a printing knowledge to a virtual knowledge, there is only a little shock. Most of the information stored virtually on the Internet is also available in printing format.  That’s not the case with our country. When we are presented with a virtual knowledge, we are experiencing a significant shock. Suddenly, students or Internet users are overloaded with information and because of the suddenness and the massiveness they become lost in a desert of information. Worse is if students are not using the Internet for knowledge-advancing process, but rather for entertaining purposes.

So, could we expect the Internet technology to help the advancement of learning process in Indonesia?  The answer is that it depends on whether we can move into a printing and virtual knowledge at the same time. Reading books stimulate thought and demand it. Writing opinion and books even demands more thoughts.  Therefore it depends on whether we can promote our present culture into a reading culture and the formal education has to be able to stimulate students to write systematically.  It also depends whether we can have the commitment to respect copyrights.

One thing we may agree, problems in education today cannot be solved by putting a Web site in every school.  Soekarno and Hatta did not have a Web site at their schools and they turned out to be great people. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.  Therefore, it is not entirely determined by technology, but the willingness to explore and advance knowledge.

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Perspective: Information is not power

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