When the Internet is great (and when it isn't)

Yesterday I exercised my prerogative as a citizen who needed advice and went to the Citizens' Advice Bureau. (I note, by the way, that I've been a grammar pedant and put an apostrophe in their name, whereas they don't.) I'd been on their site to find the location of the nearest branch, but I hadn't clicked on any of the links there, because I wanted to talk to someone face to face and get an informed opinion. I'm a great believer in the internet as a source of useful information, and in education to help people sort out the information from the misinformation and the opinion dressed up as fact, but I actually wanted someone else to give me advice.

So off I went. I'd remembered the location from the website, and it was a straightforward walk - until I got to where I thought the CAB should be, and discovered it wasn't there. No worries. Thanks to the wonders of GPS, Google Maps on my phone showed me where I was - which turned out to be exactly where Google said the CAB should be. I wandered up and down a couple of side streets and eventually asked a couple who were getting into their car. They told me I needed to walk another 100 metres down the road - and when I did, going way past where Google said I should go, there was the CAB.

After a wait, I was seen by a pleasant and enthusiastic member of their team, who listened to me, and then gave me a few leaflets but told me that my main source of information would be their online advice guide. He couldn't really give me advice, he explained, because there were too many variables. What I really needed to do was get information online, so that I could make up my own mind, and then go back to talk to them again if I needed further help.

So there you are. The advice bureau advised that I should go to the internet for information. The internet is great for telling me that there's a CAB within walking distance, but not so good for finding it exactly. I suspect that the Advice Guide will give me a similar level of macro information, but I'll still need individual guidance on how to apply it to me.

There's a point at which information available to everyone becomes information that is of decreasing use to any one individual. Current iterations of the internet are moving towards personally useful information for everyone, pushing ever further away the point at which "widely available" becomes "personally inapplicable", but my feeling is that there's still some distance to go.