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Some people say that the Internet provides people with a lot of valuable information. Others think access to so much information creates problems. Which view do you agree with? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
22/M/Japan>>> TOEFL CBT 267 (5.0)
     I also think that access to so much information creates problems. Though I, myself, create a website and offer a little information to the web surfers, but still, I don't think to rely on the Internet so much has some problems. We can get much information from the Internet. And much of them might be true, correct information, but sometimes I doubt that whether it is necessary information or not. I mean there might be some valueless information. If we must read lots of valueless information on the Internet, we may consume our time and money so much. The connecting fee for the Internet is not free. Especially in my country, most of us use telephone line yet. And small amounts of people use "DSL" line to connect the Internet. As you know, if we use the "DSL" line to use the Internet, we can use the Internet at fixed costs. That means, however long hours we use the Internet, if our computers are connected to the DSL, all we have to pay is only 3,000 yen, about 30 U.S. dollars, per month.
     But the DSL users are still low in my country. For example, in my classroom at my university, 90% or more yet use the telephone line and only 10% or less use the DSL line. So if we surf the Internet for valueless information, the costs of that does not so cheap. In my university, we learn in a new style. We no more learn in an usual lecture style, but learn in a new tutorial-hybrid style. "tutorial-hybrid" means to blend an ordinally lecture style with a new self studying style. So we, about one hundred classmates are divided into twelve groups, and study in the group. We gather in a small conference room three times a week and discuss about the subjects we must learn in the week. To prepare for the discussion, some of our classmates use the Internet, and ohters use an ordinally medical book.
     If we use the Internet to get information about some medical knowledges, we can get the infromation quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, if we use ordinally types of medical books, we can not get the information we need efficiently. This is because, most famous websites such as Yahoo! and Google have their own search engines, and by using such effective search engines, we can get dozens of information at one time. If we search information by using an index of a medical book, we can not get much information.
     But the results seem to be different. I mean, in the discussion held three times a week, the Internet users usually do poor presentations, while the book viewers often do excellent presentations. I think this is because, the Internet users get too much information for their ability to deal with. And sometimes, they come across information which includes some mistakes. On the other hand, book viewers can get a little, but true and correct information by good medical textbooks. So I admit the convenience of the Internet and I believe its potential to give us valuable information. But I think that if we are not accustomed to using the Internet very well, we might only consume our time and money, and can not reach no valuable information.