Never mind the quality, feel the width

No-one doubts the quantity of information available online, but what about its quality?

In ancient times wars were fought over access to knowledge repositories.

Would our ancestors fight the same wars to access the net? Probably.

But that's mainly our ancestors liked a good scrap. While the Internet might be chock-a-block with information, it’s light on knowledge.

It is not the place to look for wisdom. Let’s face it, how many dead bodies would you walk over to unearth the lyrics of ‘Spice Up Your Life’?

Catalogues of high-resolution photographs showing supermodels in bathing costumes may be aesthetically pleasing. But unless you are a slow teenage boy wanting to study female anatomy, the knowledge content is slight.

Likewise those painstakingly collected lists of quotes by characters from The Simpsons: entertainment value high, enlightenment quotient low.

Then there are the millions of dumb home pages filled with photos of cuddly animals, basketball stars and soft porn princesses.

Adventurous, but unimaginative amateur developers garnish their pages with sound clips of heavy metal or rap. If you’re brave, you can find some of the most atrocious poetry ever written. Surf the net at random and you’ll find page after page of pure rubbish, mind-numbing sameness and precious little gold.

Of course, the web isn’t just the domain of gifted (or otherwise) non-professionals. These days commercial sites dominate. Most either sell something directly, or people who are selling things finance them. Which dilutes their value as independent information sources.

How much credence would you give to free on-line personal finance advice given to you by a bank?

In engineer-speak, the Internet could be said to have a low signal-to-noise ratio. That is, you have to sift through a great deal of rubbish to find anything worthwhile.

However, the expression implies a message is out there. Even if you know exactly what you are looking for and use the best search tools, you can still come badly unstuck.

Let me give you a chilling example.

A medical doctor surveyed 20 web sites offering help with self-treatment of common ailments. Each site looked plausible. Yet of the 20 sites, only three offered advice consistent with accepted medical procedure. A number offered seriously flawed advice. Some were no more than quackery.

We’re not talking about cultural differences; we are talking snake oil. Sooner or later, real people with real health problems are going to roll up at these sites, take the advice at face value and damage themselves.

This isn’t funny.

The worst aspect of this problem is when the sheer volume of trash drowns out good, well-researched information. Web-boosters used to say users would learn to recognise good information from bad by its brand. You might trust a news report from the ABC, BBC or CNN, but not from the National Enquirer. There’s some truth in the idea.

But do you know which brand to turn to for quality medical information or independent financial advice?