Beware of the The Research Works Act!

If the Research Works Act gets passed, the public will have to pay for government funded research reports.

You can read the full text of the Research Works Act (Bill H.R. 3699) here, and contemplate what this would mean for students, academics, doctors, nurses, engineers, and others who depend on published government sponsored research studies to do their daily jobs.  It would mean that a lot fewer studies would be Google searchable, and people would need to depend more on expensive subscription based services to access this information.

In the 1990s, educators and librarians were concerned about "The Digital Divide", and how poor people would be able to survive in the modern world without computers or Internet access.  Today, it seems that most people have access to a device and an Internet connection or WiFi hotspot, even if they personally do not own the device or pay for Internet access.  In the 21st century, "The Digital Divide" may come to mean the gap between what types of information rich and poor people will be able to access online.  The 21st century Digital Divide will mirror the state of information access in the Middle Ages, and will create distinct cultures and ideologies among the poor based on corporate or political interests.  In other words, the 99% will be kept ignorant and manipulated by those who want their money and allegiance. 

While it can be argued that the amount people are reading in the United States is declining, those studies only take book reading into account.  They do not measure the amount of reading that people do when surfing the Internet.  People are gathering more information than ever before due to Internet access on mobile devices; whether or not they can locate accurate, complete information is another story.