The one consistent answer to every impossible question is, "Google it!" And Google wouldn’t be the grand, larger than life, father of all search engines it is today without the motherly planet that allows it a home -- also otherwise known as the Internet.

We’re constantly connected and consistently searching over the Internet. The answer to any question can be found by the right amount of rephrasing and clicks. You want to know the year the Internet was invented -- well there it is. Want to know about some vague tributary of the Indus that dried out a thousand years ago? Someone, somewhere on the Internet has probably put up information about it or told you of a book or expert that will provide the answer.

The scale of it is unimaginable -- the combined knowledge of the entire discovered universe literally just a few clicks away.

Since the arrival of the Internet one thing it has definitely revolutionised is the dispensation of knowledge. A school-going child no longer needs to laboriously search through dozens of encyclopedias or even acquire the Britannica CD to find out how volcanoes work or who Tipu Sultan was -- they have the magnanimous World Wide Web.

Its wonder is not only that it provides you an answer but that it provides you an answer tailored to your specific needs. If you’re a sixth grader looking for information you can find a website that will present information in a way which is easy for you to synthesize. And, of course, no college or school essay is complete without Wikipedia. In fact, research on any given topic remains incomplete unless Wikipedia has been consulted. The reason being simple: it provides all relevant information on a topic in one consolidated file -- factual inaccuracies and all -- but then you can always recheck from other sources also courtesy the Internet!

This purely magical phenomenon -- also referred to as the Internet -- seems even more awe-inspiring when we begin to go beyond its simple daily usage and experiment in the various ways it can be used and is already being used across the world. One initiative that has gained more strength over the past few years is that of open source learning and distance education.

These focus primarily on dispensing education over the Internet either free of, or at a minimal, cost. There are various international universities that now make videos and the material for some of their courses online. Amongst them are big names in higher education, including MIT and Yale. While the material available for free does not earn them a course credit, students can also register for online courses taught via the Internet. Obviously, the overall cost endured is a lot less than that that of actually going to one of these universities.

For the ordinary student, and even teacher sitting in a developing country like ours with limited resources and opportunity, these courses provide a variety of options. Websites like Coursera operate specifically for this purpose -- they have courses available from universities all over the world.

The Khan Academy is another such international initiative that provides resources for primary and secondary education with free preparatory material for tests, such as the SAT, GMAT or MCAT.

One drawback of international initiatives is the lack of resources in Urdu. Though Virtual University functioning at the national level can try and fill this gap, its course material is also not readily available in Urdu.

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, faculty member at FC College, Lahore, and Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, believes "distance learning may be the only viable way of providing quality education in the hard sciences, such as mathematics, physics, or computer science to students in Pakistan, both rural and urban, after the matric level. This is because teacher quality in our colleges and universities is extremely poor. With distance learning, students have an opportunity to gain real knowledge and skills, rather than copy notes dictated by incompetent teachers."

At the same time, he points out, it has not yet been explored as a serious educating option within the country. "So far, the impact of distance learning in Pakistan has been small. It could easily be much greater than it presently is. This will require production of better quality educational materials, and better dissemination methods," he says.

The Internet is one easy way of disseminating knowledge but, in a country like ours, we need to start by first providing Internet connectivity and the basic infrastructure. The task is less arduous than it seems and the benefits uncountable since it has cut free the reigns of formal education and has made all kinds of information more freely available.

Governments the world over now regularly post their reports and statistics online. Pakistan has also taken such initiatives; the budgets for the provinces and the centre are all available on the websites of respective departments. The Punjab government is computerising land records and making them available online. The Intelligent Diseases Surveillance System that tracks the spread of diseases and makes the information and reports available online. The Sindh government has put online its crime statistics. Albeit a bit rough around the edges -- since the information available is not always kept up to date -- such programmes are good first steps.

Another dimension of the freedom of information is the rogue website, Wikileaks. The conversations and cables it leaked took political and bureaucratic accountability to a whole new level. While a little vague on the ethics of its functionality, the website has done some serious whistle-blowing in the past, jolting citizens and their leaders alike. It took the meaning of public data and freedom of information to another level.

The Internet has made everything more accessible, allowing more anonymity and protection to not only the creators of the website but also people sharing information. They could be sitting anywhere in the world and only need to hide their IP address.

The greatest wonder of the Internet is connectivity -- the way in which it links the world together. And it is this that makes it the most wonderful tool for the dispensation of knowledge and information. Yet, the language of the Internet is primarily English and while Google has introduced a tool that can translate into a wide variety of languages, we need to work harder to make these resources available to a wider population in our country. Till then, the plethora of opportunities will remain available to the limited few who can afford the luxury of being fluent in the language most widely used over the Internet.

On next page: Larger than that The problem with big data collection is that it is an invasion of privacy

Larger than that

The problem with big data collection is that it is an invasion of privacy

Big data, simply stated, is data that is large in volume and is continuously changing. For instance, the amount of times a particular link or a button on a particular website is clicked. This data is collected by all online websites -- be it Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Google -- unless you’ve unchecked the ‘track me’ option available in your browser.

The companies monitor a user’s habits by tracking the websites they open. This, in turn, is used to provide the user an experience that caters specifically to them. If you’ve been browsing websites about cell phones, the advertisements and pop-ups that open will all be about cell phones, at times even the specific model you’ve been looking at.

The ads that appear on your Gmail, suggesting you buy onions if you’ve been received or sent an email about onions, is Google tracking your internet movement. This is used by various corporations abroad, such as Target, to try and woo their customers by providing for them beforehand. Recently, a case came to light when Target sent coupons to a teenage girl’s house for items required during pregnancy. What sparked controversy here was that the girl had not yet informed anyone in her house of her pregnancy, creating a somewhat uncomfortable situation.

The problem with big data collection, however, is larger than that. It is an invasion of privacy, especially in an age where more and more people are sharing personal and sensitive information via the Internet. The lack of any kind of ethics ensuring some sort of privacy or outlining which information these companies can use for their benefit and which areas should be strictly no-go puts users in a vulnerable situation. At times, organisations such as Google or Facebook also share or sell this data to third parties.

Another important aspect of the entire debate is that, at times, this very personal and private data is also collected by government organisations, such as the NSA to investigate individuals. Organisations make this data available to the government, regardless of which nationality the individual belongs to.

It is, therefore, important that some code of ethics is devised to regulate big data collection.