1. Contemporary social theories describe how digital technologies have shifted communication away from traditional face-to-face and print media towards functions like social media that follow an escalating logic and erase humanism. 2. The rise of social software, open access, and just-in-time knowledge enabled by the internet challenges traditional structures of gathering and sharing knowledge by allowing information to be more freely distributed and accessed. 3. However, merely distributing information does not necessarily lead to growth of knowledge, as knowledge requires information to be meaningfully modeled and analyzed rather than just believed. The internet allows "downloadable beliefs" but risks knowledge being reduced to beliefs without justification.