Dialogue About the Uses of the Internet

Two students discuss study, payments and learning skills online — and how to judge what is true.

A dialogue between Tahmid and Rafsan

Tahmid: Rafsan, how did students manage before the internet? I cannot imagine it.

Rafsan: My father says they went to a library and waited for a book someone else had borrowed.

Tahmid: That sounds impossible now. I looked up three things this morning before breakfast.

Rafsan: It has changed more than study. My mother pays the electricity bill on her phone instead of standing in a queue.

Tahmid: And my uncle abroad sends money home the same way.

Rafsan: Have you used it for anything besides looking things up?

Tahmid: I learned to solder from a video. There was nobody in our area to teach me.

Rafsan: That is the real gift of it — a person in a village can learn what was once only available in a city.

Tahmid: Though not everything on it is worth learning.

Rafsan: No. And the difficulty is that a false thing spreads faster than the correction of it.

Tahmid: How do you decide what to believe?

Rafsan: I check who is saying it. If a claim has no source and asks me to forward it, I assume it is false.

Tahmid: That is a simple rule. I should adopt it.

Rafsan: It is the only one that has ever worked for me.