Your name
University of Phoenix
Media and American Culture HUM/176
Wendell Smith
July 20, 2012
Internet and Information Paper
Hello,
It’s good to hear from you. You’re right to be fascinated about the internet; it can be a great tool. I use the internet nearly every day it’s like having a dictionary, thesaurus, almanac, encyclopedia, and library all rolled into one and open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The internet is a great tool however finding the information you’re looking for is like finding a needle in a stack of paperclips, lots of information that’s similar but not quite what you’re looking for it. The most common tool we use to find information on the internet is a search engine. Google has probably what many would consider the best search engine out there followed by one developed by Microsoft called Bing. Once you enter what you’re looking for into the search engine it will crawl through all the possible matches to your search and give organize them into the most likely matches starting with those with the highest probability of matching. Once you have this narrowed down list you have to vent the results for credibility. I try to find sources as close to the origin of the information as possible. I’ll go to manufacture websites, research firms, educational sites, government sites or anyone that has an established reputation that I can use as a point of reference. I try to avoid sites that are from free sources or open forums that allow for anonymous or guess. I generally believe that anything said by someone that doesn’t want to take responsibility for it shouldn’t be used as an informational source. It really comes down to common sense and if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. It also helps to know how to recognize rhetoric and bias information. Usually you can see a writers’ intentions within the first few posts or by checking out the links