Information transfer is occurring at the speed of fiber optics in the Communication Age, and part of that knowledge transfer is due to people creating web sites which promote their skill at a certain activity. As former methods of gathering information become obsolete, it is easy to see that the near instantaneous information sharing aspect of the internet is having a rapid effect upon society.
No longer do people wonder for long periods of time about something of which they are curious. In the past, relegated to books and libraries for information gathering on an unfamiliar topic, knowledge was a slowly gathered commodity. It took time to get to the library, especially during a busy workweek. It took time to look through the paper notecards which held details on various resources pertaining to the topic of interest. Finding such books on the shelf was also time consuming, as they were not always grouped together, and some were inevitably checked out by other patrons. Placing a hold on a desired piece of material required yet another trip back to the library once the material was checked in and set aside.
That entire process, made publicly available for free by Andrew Carnegie initially, is utterly obsolete in the Communication Age. Now, people who have interests from the smallest idea to the largest, and every size in between, can and do create websites accessible from any internet access point. No longer is information stored in centralized locations such as libraries – instead, it is everywhere on the internet. It is also created and updated regularly by interested parties, and those who lose interest and stop updating their information are ranked lower by search engines whose job it is to find and provide the most current and applicable information sought.
In an age where facts, figures, and records change daily, it is inconceivable to think of pulling a dusty encyclopedia from a shelf somewhere and expecting to find relevant, useful data inside. On a day-to-day basis, society may not physically move faster than it has in the past, but its information sure does!