Finding information used to require real time and effort. It was an errand — you went somewhere, asked someone, or paid for a shelf of books.
Before networks, people relied on libraries, card catalogs, expensive encyclopedias, and local experts. An encyclopedia set was a serious household purchase, sold door to door and out of date the day it arrived.
Now search engines and AI provide information in seconds — but users must decide whether it is accurate and trustworthy. The answer arrives instantly; the judgment still takes as long as it ever did.
The bottleneck moved from access to verification. The old gatekeepers were slow, but they curated; the network delivers everything, including the nonsense, at the same speed and in the same font. That is why I tell students the real skill is no longer finding an answer. It is deciding which answer deserves belief.
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