I'm of the opinion that as far as information being free goes, it's not going to go away. It's possible that it will for the vast majority of people -- but the

I'm of the opinion that as far as information being free goes, it's not going to go away. It's possible that it will for the vast majority of people -- but the vast majority of people aren't using the internet as an educational tool. The people who understand and implement the things that make the internet work are, by and large, people who want information to be free. I'm of the opinion that we're in the middle of something akin to the 2nd industrial revolution, and that we'll have quite the upheaval in the way people provide for themselves assuming that we don't end ourselves (in fact, we've already seen quite a bit of change in the possibilities for providing for oneself, especially in the "Western world". I would be extremely surprised if there wasn't a fair amount of resistance to the coming ubiquitous nature of the availability of information, but frankly that's more of a cultural issue (and a power issue, but that's another topic) than not, and will die out given time. Hopefully quickly. The current barrier to getting useful information on the internet is the willingness to seek and search and think critically. This has always been the barrier to getting useful information on the internet, and since we can't assume that everyone is going to put valid information out there (not to mention that we can't assume that people are actually willing to teach themselves), we need to assume that this will always be the barrier to getting good information on the internet. I don't think that the newfound ability of the common person to educate themselves about damn near anything is going away, or getting any harder. I don't think that any sort of actual attempts at regulation of the internet will be successful -- although I do think that we shouldn't ignore them. Anyhow, I'm stopping now. I'm not quite awake yet.