Picked up from Dave Winer... Michael Gorman, the president-elect of the American Library Association, publishes an article that I would say is pretty close to an hominem attack on the practice of blogging, with search engines dragged in for good measure. Very annoying. I will resist the urge to indulge in point-by-point nit-pick, since those are SO boring.
Google is notoriously ineffecient? Give me a break. Sure the "Google exposes the mind of God" hype is way over the top, but surely someone so learned as Mr. Gorman should be able to resist the tempation to attack a straw-man.
It sounds like Gorman feels personally and unjustly attacked by bloggers, in response to an article he wrote in which he (his words) " temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine". So I am guessing he is lashing out in response. I can imagine, that if I were to meet him in person, he would undoubtedly be interesting, and might well be affable. So long as we kept the discussion away from blogs and search engines.
This is yet another example of disdain from the professional librarian class, for the power of the web and of search. Though in some ways well-meaning, I can't help but feeling they are willfully consigning themselves to the role of "dinosaur", just like the experienced mainframe professionals, in the eighties, who disdained the PC. Though the notion that "information doesn't exist if it can't be found on the web" is imperfect, it carries an important core truth for the average person (actually, far beyond the average person--I think it is relevant up to, say, to somewhere around 98th percentile of motivation for information-seeking).
For sake of argument, let's agree that few "of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts ". What is that supposed to prove? Are Blog People somehow unique in this regard. So only the people who do engage in this activity are wise enough to have truly well-informed opinions on the usefulness of digitized information? (And what does he mean by "Blog People", anyway?)
A couple of irionies. The article is presumably an op-ed piece, which is very close to the blog form. Also, he doesn't have the savvy even to link to his own article, so that we can easily trace back to the genesis of his controversy. Perhaps that is a test of motivation--if you aren't willing to look it up, if you only will take the time to read it if it is a simple click away, perhaps you aren't intellectually worthy?
8:17:06 AM 
|
