We only had one class again this week, but the information we did get to cover was super cool.

First we reviewed where this class is going. I understand how students would have difficulty following this class or want more information about the organization of it. For whatever reason, I’m not really minding the (what seems like) lack of organization and the variety of topics we’re covering. I’m trying to be more chill about my academics while upholding my normal A+ work. *Note: I’m sure the class was very well thought out and is on the best path for what we need to cover.

We returned to the question of “who controls information?” And whether information becomes useless if it is not shared. I get this. Information wants to be free, and it is not beneficial if it’s not. Controlling information won’t make you or the society richer. We all prosper if information can be shared.

Then we moved on to talking about what the causes of the civil war may have been. Could it be more complex than just slavery? Sure, but I’m not certain it is. I have not studied the civil war in detail, so I guess I can’t really say. In discussing this topic, we took a look at some primary sources to determine whether or not African Americans fought in the confederate army against the union. Some documents say that was the case, and that something like 3,000 soldiers in the army were black. Seems suspect. There are photos too.

So what’s the point of this discussion? It’s that nowadays, we have access to *every* piece of information via the internet. This means that lots of information we find is under-researched, cropped, twisted in an advantageous direction, biased, etc. Because of this extraordinary resource available to us called the internet, we now have a moral responsibility to determine what information is valid and what is not. We have to think a lot more about the sources of our information, whereas in the past, information came from print sources which were credible. We now have the moral responsibility to interpret and validate the sources we find because now primary documents can be found to create an argument, and falsified in doing so.

That’s all I have for this week.

-Jessi Russell