Nowadays most information is available online, whereas in the past knowledge used to be stored in books and on paper. Do you think the advantages of this situation outweigh its disadvantages?

 Nowadays most information is available online, whereas in the past knowledge used to be stored in books and on paper. Do you think the advantages of this situation outweigh its disadvantages?

Nowadays, knowledge about any subject and topic can be accessed from the websites instead of following the traditional practice of reading books. This new trend offers both benefits and drawbacks. 

To start with, the availability of information on the internet has made it easier for people to get inputs about any subject, topic and area of interest without needing to carry heavy books since a web portal can store millions of books in a small hard disc. Besides this, one does not need to go to the shop to buy separate books, or visit libraries to borrow them, they can now sit at their homes or in their offices and obtain any amount of data as per their desire, without paying huge amounts of money.

Additionally,  this new arrangement has brought in a major benefit for the environment. As internet based storage does not need any paper for printing, the need to cut down trees has reduced considerably, which is helping prevent deforestation. For example, many environmental studies carried out over the period of twenty years from 2000 show that clearing of the green cover has phenomenally slowed down due to demand for paper declining. 

However, storing information about everything online and obtaining it from this source has a couple of major failings. The data is many times prone to hacking and manipulation, which can make it unreliable and users can be misled unless they are cautious. Moreover, this source of information is dependent on electricity and the network, and thus if both go missing people cannot get any information.

Overall, I firmly believe that even though the benefits of this evolution exceed its pitfalls, the conventional practice of writing and accessing books must not be abandoned to avoid any problems in case of any mishap.