Today, during a trip to the store my cashier gave me a flier for flu shots. “Flu shots?” I asked. “At Wal-Mart?” The girl responded, “yes” that Wal-Mart was indeed selling them and that the reason they were advertising so early was because the country ran out last year. On the way to the car I heard my roommate grumble to herself.

“She was wrong.” Sarah muttered. “I should have corrected her. The country didn’t run out last year. Wal-Mart ran out, and the country rationed them for ‘at-risk’ groups.” To clarify, Sarah just got her M.A. in Public Health. She’s about to move to Boston for her Ph.D.

I run into this situation quite a bit: one where someone says something wrong, misguided, or outright false. Where, they don’t bother to check if they are right or not before they speak. The librarian in me is losing hair over this.

Well, maybe that’s not really why, but I’m reminded of a quote from the Confucian Analects – “A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak but quick to act.” The idea here isn’t only that someone should focus on action (Confucius especially valued learning), but that it’s important to make sure you are right before speaking.

It’s an idea that extends well beyond ancient China.

Unfortunately, I’m pessimistic about the ability for most people to develop this trait. It’s all too rare. Naturally, humans have a sort of “bounded rationality,” a problem solving mindset that hones in on answers through fits and starts. The problem is, so long as this is our default behavior, people will always be quick to speak. In any sort of self-governing society this is a bad – or at least an inefficient – thing.

I’ve made the case before that technology doesn’t resolve the problems related to our tenancy toward intellectual laziness.

The idea, of course, that I’ve sought to counter is that the Internet has created a vast democratizing network which gives  a voice to everyone. I’ve opined, “so what?” I have a voice. Does anyone read my blog? Not really. So, does it matter if I have a voice or not when everyone else does? The right and wrong alike? Frank Rich in an op-ed column in the New York Times cuts to the heart of this. He points to ghost written Twitter accounts, an explosion in web-based falsehoods (i.e. that President Obama is a Muslim), and astro-turf political sites that mislead people about popular opinions.

Without touching on how this happens, Rich notes that dishonesty, carefully crafted communication, and our behavioral tendencies all undermine the web’s potential. In short, the things that have made democracy tough to manage before (lies, money, tendencies to not fact-check, and a misinformed electorate) exist today today. Moreover, these problems haven‘t been eliminated by the Internet and it’s ability to provide easily accessible information.

All that the web has done is supercharge who we are – flawed people.

Improving the quality of public information is important. But, it can’t be achieved by simply making more of it accessible. The problem is us. It’s our inability to separate the truth from the lies. It’s our intellectual laziness. It’s our dishonesty. It’s our desire to get what we want and sell our personal beliefs.

So long as technology fails to address the limitations we have, it will always be limited by them. And, this is why an old-school librarian approach still matters.

When my parents moved to rural Fordland, Missouri two years ago they expected to give up a few luxuries. First, they have to commute to town for work, food, and most of their basic needs. Sometimes this includes a thirty minute drive to Springfield. Second, they gave up local utilities, and at least in part thanks to my dad, are living on a home-brewed utility network (i.e. a well and several solar panels). But, they never realized how much of a pain it was to get access to external information.

The Webster County Library is twenty miles away and their only options for Internet access are dial-up and an expensive satellite Internet contract. A few months ago the local phone company provided DSL service to the rest of the people on their road, but because they live in a valley the company decided not to hook them up. Interestingly enough this presents a very unique situation. With the Internet out of reach and broadband necessary to access all but the most basic sites my parents are effectively being denied a link to the outside world. Given a recent NPR piece on rural Internet networks this is the case for about 10% of the United States.

Twenty years ago nobody would have considered the Internet and information access to be a utility. I’m not so sure this is the case anymore. With important Government information, forms, and other private sector data only accessible online those without access are left, well, disenfranchised. The children who group up in rural environments are notably at a disadvantage as well. Though I haven’t taken the time to lay out a strong argument for it my intuitions certainly seem to hint that the Internet is a utility that all Americans should have access to. After all, isn’t the cornerstone of Democracy an informed general populace?