1997, The Chronicle of Higher Education: "How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students Research Papers"

https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/...

2000: What? Use a Book for Doing Research? College Students Forsake Library Shelves for Computers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2000/08/24/what...

2002:

> Point. Click. Think? > As Students Rely on the Internet for Research, Teachers Try to Warn of the Web's Snares > He doesn't consider visiting the campus library or opening a book. Why should he? "You can find whole pages of stuff you need to know on the Web, fast," he says.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/07/16/...

2003: Google in the Research and Teaching of Instruction Librarians

> The use of Google as a research tool is widespread among undergraduate students. > There are both librarians and faculty who express concern when Google is used for research and when it becomes a replacement for research tools accessible primarily through libraries.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00991...

I distinctly remember statements and discussions like that from way back when. Not just relating to google but around whatever the new search engine of the day was (however, I do agree that the sentiment around PageRank was mostly positive).

It was actually the entire internet. It didn't matter what the search engine came back with, anything on the internet was suspect.

Then it was Wikipedia. Since anyone could update it, anything on Wikipedia was suspect.

Now even though Claude seems smarter than any person I interact with on a daily basis, it is all suspect.

Then there is the opposite with arxiv. Anything on arxiv is not just true but has authority in an argument, automatically. Everything besides papers on reproducibility. Those are basically ignored.

Epistemology is not our strong point.