Instant information

Reading aloud to the children from Kingfisher's History Encyclopedia on Tuesday, I read "The Mongols dominated Asia for 100 years during the 1200s, creating the world's largest-ever empire, ..." Josiah immediately responded, "I don't think that's true: I think the British Empire was the largest empire." I acknowledged that the book could be wrong: the size of empires is one of those things that are hard to define exactly, and I prepared to continue reading. Josiah was not satisfied and requested we find out. I agreed to help him do so, thinking we would look it up later, but Josiah insisted we find out on the spot. So I put aside the book, went over to the computer and was soon reading Wikipedia's List of largest empires. (I had thought I would have to read Wikipedia's British Empire and Mongol Empire pages, but Wikipedia seems to have everything these days.) Sure enough, Wikipedia agrees with Josiah: the British Empire was larger, though the page discusses the difficulties in measuring empires in general and the Mongol Empire in particular.

What struck me about this incident was that Josiah took for granted that we could and should immediately find an answer to his question. His is the first generation for whom instant information has been accessible during their school years. If, at Josiah's age, I had wanted to know which empire was larger, I would probably have asked my parents or other adults around if they knew. I don't think they would have known. Then I might have looked through the books and encyclopedias we had at home but I don't believe we had anything that would have answered this question. So my next step would have been to use my local library but to be honest I would only bother to do that if I was especially interested in the question.