Commentary

In order to find the following information about Valentine’s Day I utilized the Google Search engine. I typed in the phrase “History of Valentines Day.” I explored the first seven websites that Google listed. Not surprisingly, most of the websites I visited had much of the same information. As a matter of fact, the www.kidsdomain.com website seemed to have cut and paste information from the www.history.com website. The repetition of the same information made me feel like it was unnecessary to search beyond the first page of websites listed by Google.

Overall, however, this assignment has helped me gain more appreciation for information put out in cyberspace by supposed non-authorities. I was surprised by the depth of the chronologies I read. Many of the detailed nuanced stories did not even com from www.wikipedia.org or the www.history.com websites!! I wonder about the reasoning behind putting so much information about such a miscellaneous subject on the web. While scholars supposedly participate in scholarly exercises because of pure love for knowledge I have assumed (due in part to my training in the academy) that others are fueled by impure money hungry agendas. This exercise has prompted me to possibly reconsider. Much of the information that I came across while completing this assignment seemed to have the genuine mission of simply informing the general public.