We have to separate the ‘bad’ news from the ‘good’ news. Much in the manner of economics good news must drive out bad news like good money driving out bad. The bad news is unhealthy for society and knowledge transmission. Information is something else sometimes indistinguishable from miss information.

But the challenge is knowledge transference- transferring information to knowledge. But if the basics are wrong, that is information then we have a society bereft of knowledge and thriving on rapacity, passion to incite and divide people. Using knowledge and information towards divisive ends spells doom for society.

Hence information which is wrongly propagandist is today dubbed as fake news in which the double-edged sword of technology is aiding and abetting. Man’s ingenuity in garbling and distorting information has reached a new high nay a new low. 

The problem begins when we are out to malign: individuals, communities, those who we regard as adversaries. Yet technologically a globalised world meant a borderless world on the face of technology where human barriers are broken withstanding nationalities and races.

Yet the preposterous fake news can break minuscule of societies and herald worst acts of criminality. Social media forces which initially brought the world into a unified cosmos has now fallen prey to invidious actions of defamation, maligning and instigating people towards false information. 

Yet the antidote lies in education. Education can channelise technology in creating alternate colleges, universities, and classrooms. These can question fake news and dismantle them by illustrating to the public their pernicious and ill effects. These institutions on the internet and without walls will have the social responsibility to edifying and instructing on the two-sidedness of the Internet.

We have the MOOCs courses both in India and abroad they have a positive role to play in the years to come. They must divert human attention from the frivolities of the Internet to its seriousness as digital repositories of solid information, knowledge, and wisdom where knowledge is the intellectual property of communities worldwide.

Knowledge transference would then mean a knowledge paradigm right from the young to the old. This will be our endeavour to create more ‘classrooms’ worldwide out of space, time and place. Good knowledge will drive out bad knowledge and alternative models of education will be created. The internet must be used more and more for education and less and less for personal and political aggrandisement.