[untog]

i don't have access to a lot of information that the president of the USA had 30 years ago. Most public information on the internet today was also available pre-internet. The main difference is the time needed to access information.

But time restriction is information restriction. Who in the 1980s had the time to sit in a library for hours on end every day researching esoteric issues? I'd argue that the information wasn't meaningfully available to everyone - only people in academic careers that had time to conduct research.

[JonSkeptic]

I agree, but I also think the poster to whom you are responding has a valid point as well. The internet gives us access to a lot of useful information. It also gives us access to orders of magnitude more useless information. And the President of the United States? Well, I just hope that 30 years ago his information was better than what I can find by Googling. (Though hind-sight makes most things clear)

I think the President comparison is useful, because we, if nothing else, have the ability to access so much information that would have made the President's jaw drop three decades ago. However, I agree with the minor nitpick that he had access to higher quality, classified information that the rest of us will never see.

Also, I find this comic to be 100% relevant: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=759#comic