Love it or loathe it, the Internet has made the world a smaller place. Instant communication, relatively uncontrolled for many of us, has revolutionised the way we think.

It occurred to me the other day that I have been exposed to so many more opinions than my parents would ever have had access to. Yes, they’d have been able to read books and newspapers, listen to the radio and watch the television, but the opinions there were always filtered through an editorial process and was always subject to the whim of a publisher (or Government, of course).

The Internet though, for me in the “free” world, doesn’t always have those filtering processes applied. Yes, owners of on-line publishing outlets do apply their editorial policy and ownership prejudices, but those who comment on pieces published are not too often reigned in.

There are, of course, acceptable standards applied at particular access point to the World Wide Web. I’m sure if I were to publish something that was abhorrent to the standards that apply to my locality then at best I might have my work removed, at worst I may get visit from the authorities. But I’m not talking about extremes here, I’m talking about normal human reaction; opinions that in the past may never have been aired because they didn’t fit the editorial or ownership policy. It’s those things that have broadened my outlook somewhat, albeit that opinion is good, bad and just plain wacky.

Let me offer you an example. After the terrible tragedy of Sandy Hook, I read many articles from professional reporters and commentators, all of them angled in one way or another to reflect the view of the writer or the organisation they represented. It was the comments from ordinary people that absolutely staggered me. I’m from the UK and I live in Canada, both democracies that believe in stringent gun control, but here I was reading people who genuinely believed that the way to reduce gun violence is to arm more people. They were saying “Give the teachers guns so that they can take down gunmen before too many kids get killed”. That kind of view is an absolute anathema to me; where I come from you take guns away to reduce the risk, not the other way around. But thinking about it now, at least I have been exposed to those views and am beginning to understand more about a people for whom gun ownership is important.

A similar exercise in the incredulous for me is when I hear comments about healthcare being delivered by Government and paid for by taxes. My background is the British welfare state and healthcare free to users at the point of delivery, but I read commentators every day suggesting that to use taxes to provide healthcare is, well, criminal – “Don’t put a gun to my head to make me pay for someone else’s healthcare” were words I saw written just yesterday. This opinion, widely held in the US, just doesn’t compute for a Brit who lives in a another country where healthcare is also provided by taxation.

I’m not getting into the semantics of whether I agree with someone else’s opinion or not, but it is educational (to say the least) to read and learn how others think. Instant publication of opinion through the Internet may not always be entirely palatable to me, but to have access to such opinion is priceless.