For the most part, filesharing facilitates access to movies and music. In turn, these art forms become an invaluable source of inspiration and cultural diversity for individuals all across the globe.
I'd like to turn your attention, however, to something filesharing offers that is seldom discussed: Dark Matter.
No, you can't literally gain access to dark matter through YouTube or your favorite filesharing program. But if you are a member of any number of popular torrent sites (oink.cd or demonoid.com, among others), you can download a series of 24 lectures by a professor from the California Institute of Technology on dark matter and dark energy.
That's a whole semester's worth of college-level information on groundbreaking, theoretical topics at the forefront of physics and astronomy. And that's not all I found, either.
Once the lectures sparked my interest, I did a little more investigation and found audiobooks and eBooks on the philosophical (Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"), the literary (Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums"), and--ironically--even the anti-global (Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters").
These finds opened my mind to the extent that filesharing could change our world and further the positive aspects of globalization. With this technology, individuals could potentially receive the equivalent of a college education with the click of a few buttons. Organizations focused on the environment or other humanitarian causes could spread their messages by letting entire books or documentaries loose on filesharing networks. And, of course, individuals can continue to express themselves in new and exciting ways.
The possibilities for global connection and understanding are endless. I can only wonder what's next...
