Marc Pesce’s Unevenly Distributed: Production Models for the 21st Century post provides very good examples of how much of an information society we have become. Much like people would recommend books to friends, we now share links to information and videos by forwarding them to friends who we feel will enjoy what we have seen. This ability keeps the knowledge going. Friends will, in turn, send you back things that they think you will enjoy. Knowledge is constantly distributed among the millions of people connected to the Internet. When teachers use resources from the Internet in their classes, information is being distributed to learners.

I have only been a teacher for four years, and I really appreciate the information that is out there that I can use in my classroom and not have to “reinvent the wheel” by designing my own activities for lessons. I know that when I was going to school, the computers we used ran from 5 1/4″ disks, no hard drives, and a simple programming language called BASIC. Teachers taught using the information they had learned through classes, textbooks, and personal experience. We used magazines and newspapers for current events, so the information was only as current as the date it was printed. These days, I can log into as many web sites as I have time to access and read news that is fresh.

Once given the ability to access information so readily, people hunger for more.  We are excited to see what is on YouTube, what the latest wiki is offering to us in information, what others are saying about a particular item we are interested in purchasing, what is going on in our local communities, download an e-book, and so much more.  My favorite part about having this much information distributed is that I don’t have to pay a lot (if anything) to get the information.  No cost of newspaper, magazine, book, no more buying a CD for one song, when I can go online and purchase it in mp3 format.  I can carry around up to 80 gigabytes of songs and videos on my Microsoft Zune instead of having a bunch of CD’s which take up space.  I can read my e-book on my Palm instead of carrying a hard or soft cover book around.  Being in an information society with such a wide distribution of information has made our lives simpler because of access and storage.  It is convenient, cost effective, and provides us with more information than ever dreamed possible.  As information distribution becomes more widespread, learners will keep on absorbing information at a high rate.