Lou Judson • Intuitive Audio 415-883-2689
See also Britannica's point by point response to the Nature article that suggested Whacky-Packia is as useful/truthful as Britannica (www.britannica.com).
Search engines are just as bad as Whacky-Packia in perpetuating the Internet as echo chamber for rumors, half-truths and out-of-contexts. Most search engines return results based on being paid to favor some pages over others (do some digging and you'll find that just about all of them have this practice -- a "favored return" or something like that). And since kids are not being taught to discriminate about sources and context, to them all results are equally valid. Plus, if one is searching for very specific information, even after years of tuning search engines, you better know some very specific keywords or you will spend hours wading through garbage.
Now, I'm no Luddite (I prefer "traditionalist ;) ) but I think one needs to approach real research on the Internet, as opposed to leisurely pursuit of curiosity, with great care and caution. And, as I spent a good hour explaining to my niece recently, just because 10 pages say the same wrong thing doesn't mean it will ever be right.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alec McLane" <amclane@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Zits cartoon strip (trying to get back to matters archival)
It might have been this op-ed piece from the NY Times:
OPINION | March 26, 2006
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/opinion/26tenner.html? ex=1144213200&en=0a1bc989fbb245c0&ei=5070&emc=eta1>Op-Ed
Contributor: Searching for Dummies
By EDWARD TENNER
Are search engines making today's students dumber?
Alec McLane
At 09:59 AM 3/29/2006, Lou Judson wrote:I'm sorry I did not save a link to something I read recently about some kind of test or survey that indicated kids who use the internet can only find things with search engines, not with boook and brains... I do not assume this meant discrimination, rather use of resources if not organized by algorithms. If I find it I'll post it, if not then this is just one of those "I read it on the net" messages...
Lou Judson . Intuitive Audio 415-883-2689
On Mar 29, 2006, at 5:56 AM, Karl Miller wrote:
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Lou Judson wrote:
On the other hand, kids these days are able to search but barely to reason...
I assume you mean the ability to discriminate? How does one tell the good
from the bad and how do you tell what is "real" and what is not in the
digital world.
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Alec McLane
Scores & Recordings/
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