As Hiroshi Komiyama, President of University of Tokyo, pointed out in his speech at the meeting of OECD Education Ministers on the future of higher education, technology has taken great leaps forward in the twentieth century.  Human knowledge has vastly expanded. Many educators now believe that the most significant challenge they'll face in the twenty-first century will be managing this explosive output of knowledge, and creating a new educational system to make use of it.

This explosion of knowledge has been attributed to the exponential rise in the use of the Internet. People can now easily share myriad information, knowledge, ideas, and academic works online through their own websites, public news forums, Facebook, MySpace, personal blogs, or other online media. As a result, this considerable
online knowledge-sharing has radically changed our reading habits. There is simply not enough time to read and digest these vast sums of information. Internet users have grown accustomed to merely scanning and browsing what they see on the web. Nicholas Carr, an American writer and expert on the impact of technology on society, argues that the Internet is eroding our ability to both concentrate and contemplate. These abilities are the key mental requisites that enable us to effectively consume and digest books, or other long or complex textual information.

The information explosion in the Internet era raises another problem. With all the information available on the Web, how are users to distinguish what is accurate, useful, or worth knowing? This is now a common concern for educators, as many students prefer researching online, rather than at a library. While libraries themselves were never foolproof sources of information, the quality of online information may vary even more. As educators, it is essential that we instruct students in the evaluation of internet materials. Generally, there are five criteria to evaluate the quality of any research materials, including online sources: scope of coverage, authority, objectivity, accuracy, and timeliness. There is also a checklist available to help researchers evaluate their discoveries.

The free and ready access to the wealth of knowledge on the web has also created a culture of indifference on the question of authorship, appropriate attribution, and credit where credit is due. Plagiarism and other misuse of intellectual property has become commonplace. The notion of appropriate citation or permission is foreign and irrelevant to many internet users. The responsibility for stemming this trend falls to educators. Teachers should take seriously the need to acquaint their students with appropriate parameters for using internet materials. It has also become increasingly important to require students to represent their critical thinking on a given topic, and to reflect on the process and outcomes of their learning. There are a few suggestions made by the Council of Writing Program Administrators to guide faculty in helping students avoid misuse of information, plagiarism. Faculty members, they say, should design assignments with an eye toward the investigation of a topic, rather than summary or overview.  CWPA recommends clearly stating the goals of assignments, insisting on original, critical thinking as often as possible, and clearly communicating to students all documentation, attribution, and plagiarism expectations.  Furthermore, it should be clear that whenever students are uncertain about using the work of others, they should consult their teachers/professors for clarification. Administrators, for their part, must enact and support uniform policies schoolwide, must create a climate that values academic honesty, and must provide professional development opportunities that reinforce such a climate.

There are, of course, many achievements to celebrate under the current knowledge
explosion. Digital technology provides thinkers the opportunity to share their expertise with a much broader audience than was previously available. We have simply become more productive in our capacity to share knowledge. This ready access is an even greater boon to recipients. Consider the wealth of information now at the fingertips of cancer patients, for example. Blogs and comment pages also provide those in need information and opinions from others like them.  Of course, this kind of democratized information-sharing can be risky in the area of medicine, but as David Wolman states in his article, “The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn’t Led Us Into a New Dark Age,” digital technology should offer a wide range of people more opportunities to broaden their knowledge.