It’s now 11:31 p.m. and I’ve been at this computer off and on for four hours, typing when an actually coherent thought comes through (which is about one in twenty,) and I have half a page of a paper done. What could this paper be, you ask? Well, it’s… Bio II. Yeah. Not difficult to say the least, and definitely not something I haven’t done before.

The problem is the fact that I can’t use a single online source for this paper. Not one. The professor (a nerd chick about the same age as yours truly,) won’t allow any sort of purely online research. I quote (text formatting is the same as the original paper requirements sheet):

You may not cite websites. I will take off significant points for every website cited.

With a massive blow to my gut that accompanies the short, bookworm-esque professor yelling “THIS IS SPARTA!” and a large pit of real-life research behind me, you can probably guess my response: what the fuck?

I’ve long understood why professors generally want students to stray away from non-sourced, unfounded material for research in general, but this phobia of anything related to the Internet needs to stop. The same rules that applied to the research outside of the Internet can apply to the material in it - if you can’t show sources and respectable information, it isn’t worth shit. The fact that the source is digital shouldn’t change its underlying credibility.

But it isn’t published! Publishing something doesn’t make it any more credible than it was before. Just look at some of the crap people are willing to publish these days (the large print version is for when the eyes god supposedly gave you in the first place start to fail and you don’t want to go to hell.) There are published books about invisible men, ESP, aliens, and thousands of other completely discredited concepts.

But it doesn’t have accurate information! Neither do a lot of published, widely accepted works; see above (sorry, couldn’t resist. Promise that was the last Bible joke.) Even “traditional” sources of information are prone to errors, which are hard to correct. For a real slap in the face that helps prove this, check out this Wikipedia article that demonstrates errors in the Encyclopedia Britannica that were corrected online.

But it was just written by other people! They don’t have any expertise! Actually, this is as useless a statement online as it is in real life. I’ve met Ph.D.-wielding, full-grown men who thought they could levitate, and people without degrees who could whoop my sorry over-educated ass any day of the week at things I consider myself well-versed in. I’m sure you can think of examples of these sorts of people as well. There’s also that little oddity that all of the knowledge we possess was pretty much just “written by other people.” (Cheap shot, but you get the point.)

In the end, you can make every argument you want to oust the intarwebs from any and all research, but you’ll only find that it’s no worse and no better than the research methods we’ve all used and relied on for years. You still need to sift through sources, give credit where it’s due, and discard useless and misleading pieces of information. The only difference is that now you can do it in your underwear without getting either arrested or showered with dollar bills (or both, if you’re the lucky type.)

It’s now 12:10 a.m., and I’m late posting. I’ve left weak points in my argument, and I’m going to be typing at this taunting, overly-white screen until 2 in all likelihood. Glad I’m allowed to at least use the computer to type the paper, because chiseling the sort of drivel I spout out into stone would drive anyone insane.