The World Wide web is growing rapidly, unpredictably, unevenly, and without the familiar of established publishers and vetting procedures. As the web assumes ever importance in education, research, and daily life, these phenomena deserve more examination. Is the web a bountiful source of information and resources on every topic, as some claim? Or, is it unreliable, ephemeral, and overcommercialized others warn? Do we need to develop criteria for evaluating web pages separate the good from the bad? Is the web a fundamentally different medium that new modes of critique? This essay explores how characteristics of the web lead it being simultaneously a great and a questionable source of information. The issue then how we should read such a complex and contradictory text.
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Bertram C. Bruce (2000) studied this question.