OT: Re: Alphabeticisation ?

[Kay C Lan]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:08 AM, Mark Wieder <mwieder at ahsoftware.net> wrote:

> Closed stacks
> and computerized searches are the antithesis of this phenomenon.
>

Point taken. On the other hand isn't your case of surfing the web the
current ultimate example. In a book store I'm likely only to find a book
that I didn't intend to find, with the web, it's not only the 'territory and
subjects' you mention, but a whole host of people I'd never ever otherwise
interact with. As with everything we have to take the good with the bad. If
it wasn't for computerization and focused searches, we wouldn't have ended
up with Google and everyone hyperlinking and keywording and just 'having to
to have' a web presence.

>
> > access to more accurate data is readily available via the internet.
>
> Here's one case where your wife is wrong. More timely information, yes,
> since the time to print a physical document is appallingly long. But there
> are so many Wikipidiots out there that it's well to distrust anything that
> comes in over the internet. Otherwise you'll end up buying High-quality
> medz
> at low prices from Nigeria.
>
> Again a very good point, but I don't think I inferred that 'only accurate'
data was available on the internet. My wife spends A LOT of time teaching
teachers how to avoid your aptly termed 'Wikipidiots'. I've been to "The
World's Biggest Bookstore" - it wasn't, eaten at "The Worlds Best Deli", it
wasn't, and eaten "The World's Best Sandwich"  - it wasn't. Advertising is
full of opinion conveyed as fact, that's just life, we are always 'sifting
the wheat from the chaff'.

I stand by my wife's original statement - 'more accurate data is readily
available via the internet', especially taken in the context it was given
with reference to smaller library collections and paper encyclopedias. Even
outside that context, apart from being an eyewitness to some event, I can't
readily think of anything that, if I was really interested, I wouldn't refer
to the internet to get a broader opinion base and therefore draw my own
conclusion of what is fact, and then what I conclude as fact and what you
conclude as fact will most likely be completely different given our
different social, religions, political, economic and national biases.