My CS 404 Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot in the last few months about the whole idea of the "digital age" and what that means about the amount of information available to me today as opposed to my ancestors 200 years ago. I haven't always been what anyone would call a computer nerd. In high school I wrestled, ran track, and set school weight-lifting records. In my spare time I shot guns. Almost everything I know about computers is self taught, with the majority of that knowledge coming in the last 3 years. With so much information available, it isn't surprising that there are a great many people who abuse it, exploit it, or are so overwhelmed by it that they stay as far away from it as the can. However, what we do with this information is entirely up to us. Ten years ago I couldn't care less that you could learn almost anything about anything on the Internet. Now hardly a day goes by that I don't turn to Google, various mailing lists, Wikipedia, and other information sources online to solve a problem or learn something that I didn't know but wanted to. So despite the large scale misuse of the incredible amount of information available, I say that it's a "Good Thing" we have it.