The Pew Internet & American Life Project (http://www.pewinternet.org/) recently published a report on the role of the internet in helping people make major life decisions. Their report shows 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, went online last year to find information to help them cope with a major illness, secure a job or a place to live, buy a car, choose a college, or make a financial investment. (The report is available for download - 264K PDF.)
Why use the internet? It's simple - it works. For those five decision types above, only 5% of online users felt they got bad information, and nearly two-thirds of users felt the internet was their most important source of information compared to other, offline sources.
More significant, these users "do not feel overwhelmed by the amount of information to consider in making decisions. Information overload was not experienced by the majority of those who relied heavily on the internet in the five key decisions." This is excellent news. It means the web is finally becoming - at least for experienced users - a viable research option, with enough rich content to satisfy users. It also implies that web information design and information architecture best practices are finally taking hold. And it shows that our collective information literacy is rising: that far from feeling overwhelmed, internet users are canny and judicious in their exploratory behavior.
Marshall McLuhan famously quipped that "the medium is the message." But as the information age progresses, the significance of the medium decreases. The information is the message; content is king. People care less how they get it than that they get it. The medium becomes transparent.
