“On the Internet, Libraries, and Seeking”

“On the Internet, Libraries, and Seeking” April 28, 2017

 

Surfing the wet web.
A falling surfer off the coast of Santa Cruz, California (Wikimedia CC photo by Brocken Inaglory)
Web surfing can be just as treacherous. At least, though, these surfers aren’t in Toronto, where the waves are frozen even in July and August. Their embarrassment under such circumstances would be permanent, because they too would be frozen in place.  Google it.

 

An excellent little essay by Stephen Smoot, who has been permitted temporary home leave from his exile in Toronto, near Canada’s national igloo:

 

http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2017/04/on-internet-libraries-and-seeking.html

 

I couldn’t possibly agree more strongly.

 

I can’t count the number of times, for example, that I’ve been told by anti-Islamic internet commenters that I ought to learn something about the history of Islam, that I ought to read the Qur’an, and so forth.  (I regularly teach about the history of Islam.  And I regularly teach courses on the Qur’an, both in English and in Arabic.)  And I’ve been saddened many times to read accounts of people who, on the basis of roughly an hour of internet “research” — literally, in some cases, just an hour or even less — jettisoned their covenants and abandoned a lifetime of active membership in the Church of Jesus Christ to become embittered apostates.

 

Brother Smoot’s point is very well taken.

 

 


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