The grand vision of the Internet is as a compendium of human knowledge — rather than, say, a good resource of pet videos, pornography and will.i.am. In this view, the Internet is a kind of climax in human evolution. Long past the days of telling stories over camp fires, we are now much more efficiently gathering our information and learned wisdom in one place. Google’s stated mission, after all, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
