Post #418,274
5/22/17 2:17:33 PM
5/22/17 2:17:33 PM
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Questions.
Of the billions of pages on the vaunted Internet, how many are accurate and how many contain false information? Is library usage up or down?
I'll grant your rebuttal this: for the reasons you listed, we don't need to know how to write in our own hand anymore, nor suffer the catastrophe of serendipitously discovering something whilst researching something else, nor, $DEITY forbid, actually have to interact with another human being. All thanks to private use of IT. We'll never learn anything we don't specifically want to learn. That'll broaden our horizons with additional benefit of making us even more isolated than even our culture dictated.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #418,275
5/22/17 2:30:51 PM
5/22/17 2:30:51 PM
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So you'd have the printing press controlled as well
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Post #418,276
5/22/17 2:53:05 PM
5/22/17 2:53:05 PM
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Curmudgeon much?
we don't need to know how to write in our own hand anymore Thank the maker. Handwriting sucks. nor suffer the catastrophe of serendipitously discovering something whilst researching something else You've never been on Wikipedia then, I take it. actually have to interact with another human being *cough* What are you doing right now? There are many hundreds of people I've spent quality time with that I never would have known otherwise. Amazingly, we used to actually get together and drink beer and grill things too, every 4th (miss you, Bill). We'll never learn anything we don't specifically want to learn. That's not the fault of "private IT". There have always been and ever will be the willfully ignorant.
Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #418,277
5/22/17 2:55:01 PM
5/22/17 2:55:01 PM
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Utter Bull By-products, piled higher and deeper.
"Of the billions of pages on the vaunted Internet, how many are accurate and how many contain false information? Is library usage up or down?"
How many pages of books are accurate and how many contain false information? The ratio is probably quite similar, but on the Internet it is easy to find other sources to confirm or deny - and there's more information available on the sources than a paragraph of exaggerations on the back of the dust jacket.
Libraries are revamping themselves to encompass this wider world where books don't need to be on the shelf, and can even be printed to order.
" . . nor suffer the catastrophe of serendipitously discovering something whilst researching something else."
Absolute Bullshit! Bullshit piled to a hundred orders of magnitude.
Have you ever even used the Internet (except to read Communist propaganda)?
When researching a particular food topic, I'm often distracted into a dozen distantly related or even unrelated subjects - and I can get to them in seconds. Things like the Crimean War, a lady pirate who once ruled the China Seas and defeated the Portuguese and the British, makeshift artillery used by the Boers in South Africa, Colossal Squid, tunnels under the Mexican pyramids . . the list goes on forever. The Internet is the CAPITOL of serendipity.
"$DEITY forbid, actually have to interact with another human being."
Have you ever heard of email? Probably not because it involves interaction with other human beings. It is fabulous for scheduling visits, organizing parties, introducing yourself to people you might not otherwise have an opportunity to contact. It even works if the other person isn't there to answer the phone right now. I use email to interact with other human beings every day (I'm not a Social Media person - I want direct private contact). Physical contacts are arranged much more easily this way.
"We'll never learn anything we don't specifically want to learn."
Well, apparently that does apply to you - your world does seem a bit narrow. Do not extrapolate that to other people.
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Post #418,291
5/23/17 8:30:34 AM
5/23/17 8:30:34 AM
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There's serendipity and then there's serendipity.
Search engines narrow your information search in ways that eliminate discovery. Here's an example. I'm a grad student in a university library. I'm struggling with a particular problem in algebraic topology, so I decide to take a break and get up to walk around a bit. I go down a floor and am just walking through the racks of books and periodicals when the title of a journal catches my eye. I take it off the shelf and sit down to read a few pages and discover that research is being conducted into ancient canal building in the US desert Southwest. Now, I'm sure that if I googled "algebraic topology" eventually a link about Native American canal building in the desert Southwest would show up, right?
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #418,293
5/23/17 8:46:11 AM
5/23/17 8:46:11 AM
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There's grad students...
... and then there's the other 95%* of the population that doesn't have such "serendipitous" access to a university library. The internet is the great democratization of information that used to be the province of the elite. I'm astounded that you don't understand this.
I grew up in the age of World Books, and I went to a university. There's no comparison to the availability of information now. Go sell that disingenuous BS somewhere else. :-)
* 20.5 million university students out of 321 million, United States only.
Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #418,278
5/22/17 4:48:34 PM
5/22/17 4:48:34 PM
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Re: Questions.
Belive that you recognize that ‘Private IT’ was quite unSpecific, opening to such masterful rebuttals as the replies, especially Andrew's--with more than one-liners) As phrased re. "inescapable errata", here, isn’t this query akin to [does this have a TLA yet, elsewhere?] Someone is Wrong on the Intarweb.
I would go with … The Corporation™©® et seq.. as the culprits in the Specific, intricate, premeditated purveying of *Self-serving unalloyed, Göbbels-Class" invariably-Greed-derived/perfected PROPAGANDA (starting with virtually every BIZ-related preoccupation a one might find synonyms for (when ever trying for some complete-list fantasy, to make some Point.)
* That “Self-“ as we all know via all living experience: is, Duh, the Usual 0.1 or worse 0.001% who casually design and determine dis-USA policies ..and their egregious inescapable Hypocrisy-in-all matters, as: (Say one simple example)
(Story recently replayed on an NPR program) George Washington’s vendetta against a Female Slave who Fled.. his tender, putative darkies-lovin? sinecure. She, via underground Rwy and gumption and Righteousness, escaped the mofo-of-Substance's dragnet(s) and lived a (..I guess rather ordinary) LIFE) dying elderly-enough: of natural causes.
Simple summary: just Follow the Money/Greed/Hypocrisy afflictions via ordinary inculcated mind algorithms, and you’ve also landed on that democracy-destroying, inescapable by-product of Murican [and perhaps All..?] “capitalism-as-actually IN Situ" all along. "IT" encompasses Too Much, inextricable with its undeniable boons, so well limned above.
Hang in there; methinks that all here are on the Same-side of the seeming inevitable—and soon, should Drumpf escape Justice again—actual/authentic Barricades w/ torches
[ … and even aided-by my secret Phlogiston™ brought into use, via my revealing its simple ingredients]
I Who Be (nemesis of all cha. cha. cha. ever found under that proverbial Rock, wherever my dull mind can actually spot real unalloyed Shit)
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Post #418,292
5/23/17 8:40:22 AM
5/23/17 8:40:22 AM
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Yes, I was ambiguous and overstated.
I should have not suggested that "nothing good" has come from the private use of computer technology. I should have said that private use of computer technology (like the Internet itself) has had a net negative impact on society.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #418,294
5/23/17 8:47:16 AM
5/23/17 8:47:16 AM
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It wouldn't have made any difference
Because you'd still be stuck at [citation needed].
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Post #418,297
5/23/17 8:58:26 AM
5/23/17 8:58:26 AM
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The OP would be a good start. And of vastly greater consequence ...
Horrible happenings in Manchester. I hope you and yours (including extended "yours") are all well and safe.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #418,298
5/23/17 9:34:26 AM
5/23/17 9:34:26 AM
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Thankfully the events in Manc have not touched me, mine or anyone in my extended circle
But that's a different thread, and we can talk about it at length there.
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