Information R/evolution: Using False Comparisons to Make a Questionable Point

Information R/evolution

I was initially disappointed that Julian had closed the comments on his interesting response to the above video and to Mitch Joel's take on the video but it gives me an opportunity to post here.

One door closes, many remain open.

The above video starts with a model for information gathering that depicts finding objects on library shelves as an example of the old way of finding information versus the new world of the Web where we are freed of experts and expert taxonomies and enter a rich world of readily available information via search engines.

There's more in there but that core comparison is what interests me at the moment though I will briefly explore only one aspect.

Major problem: The library was never the sole source of information and rarely the primary source of information for most of our daily needs in pre-Web days.

Libraries have never been the only way people get information.  We also talk to neighbors, track down experts, go to bookstores, watch tv and so forth.

In a very real sense the web has rebundled those sources of information so that when we go online we might now go to our public library's online databases, talk to peers in forums, read expert blogs and e-books, watch how-to videos on YouTube and so forth.

So if you compare the web, an aggregator of all those sources, to one of those sources, then of course the web comes out as superior, even if one does not replace all those other sources with the web.

That's a rigged comparison which means that what one learns from it will be inherently flawed.

On a related note:

"There is no shelf." [!?!]

Of course there's a shelf.  It's called a server.