James Billington, who was last seen claiming that the Internet is just another dehumanizing extension of television, is at it again, this time dissing Google and the Internet,
While some compare Google’s reservoir of six billion documents to the ancient library at Alexandria, it often feels like the shallowest ocean on earth. “Google can be useful as a starting point to research or for superficial inquests,” said James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress. “But far too often, it is a gateway to illiterate chatter, propaganda and blasts of unintelligible material.”
Right, because it’s like nobody ever wrote an award winning book that was simple propagandic bullshit.
The problem is not Google — just as it is not bullshit spread on paper in traditional libraries — but rather people who a) never bothered to learn how to use traditional libraries and apparently can’t be bothered to learn the ins and outs of intelligently using a search engine, and b) a complete failure to understand or use critical thinking by a surprisingly large number of people.
It’s not that the Internet has made people more gullible, but rather that it gives ordinary people the ability to distribute and show off their gullibility through e-mail and weblogs in a way that was previously only available to major media reporters and academics.
Sources:
In Searching We Trust. David Hochman, The New York Times, March 14, 2004.