The Great and Wonderful Wizard that is the internet(1)What a font of knowledge is the internet. For questions deep or trivial, we first reach for Google (for 17% of the people it’s Yahoo; fewer still, MSN and AOL
(2)). Just think of the publishing businesses that have been killed by the internet. I used to buy at least one almanac annually; the web is my source for any weather report I need over 3 words; I have an 800-page pocket reference
(3) on my desk; but if I need to know how many square feet in an acre
(4), I just go to the internet.
But what do you get from an internet search? The top search topics are sex, celebs, and drugs
(5). Naturally, these are the topics that also collect the most advertising, spammers, and other charlatans trying to divert you from your true quest. While we can dispense with any need for accuracy in the first two topics, our health is something we all want to know more about. But which of the 37,000,000 results can you really trust?
Try an experiment by searching for a relatively broad topic like “back pain”
(6). I was impressed with the quality of the returns from the Big Three, although the sponsored links may be a little more suspect. As you get deeper into your research you’re likely to see more ads or link farms to less and less reliable sources. Some other topics (you can guess which ones) may more quickly devolve into hype and snake oil.
How do you decide which internet resources to trust? I recommend you choose a few broad or specific reference sites you’ve found you have respect for and start there. Try to avoid agglomerators that may have little more editorial input than how many paid links they can attract. Generally, you should be able to trust anything from a .gov domain. If you come back to specific topics, pick one that’s been recommended or seems authoritative and start there. But remember, a second opinion is important, too. Personally, I like
Wikipedia (
http://wikipedia.org/) because of the breadth of its expertise and the robustness of open source collaboration. Of course, Wikipedia has had its bouts of people with an agenda trying to plant articles. Fortunately, they usually get exposed quickly.
A lot of specific searches may take you to individual blogs or random writers (like me
(7)). Here you need to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Try reading a little more to get a feel for the quality of their work. You may be able to vet them yourself. For example, if they tell you to go left to get to Kmart and you end up at Target, I’d say they may be suspect.
I am allergic to heavy sales pitches from any direction and generally shy away from sites with too many ads. Remember "information wants to be free"
(8), but there are some bills everyone needs to pay. If a sponsored link looks likely to take you where you want to go, use it. If an ad-free site is useful, find the donate button and do so. A couple dollars off your PayPal account can really help with the bandwidth expense.
(1) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55/55-h/55-h.htm - 4 clicks. Actually, the phrase is “Oz, the Great and Terrible.”
(2) http://www.ahfx.net/weblog.php?article=135 – 2 clicks
(3) It
did take me 5 minutes to put the book down after looking at the last page number
(4) 43,560 – 1 click
(5) I never got a simple, definitive ranking – 10 clicks
(6) Be sure you’re not signed into your account at Google, Yahoo, or MSN when you do search – but that’s another rant altogether.
(7) http://pc3.org/smfpc3/index.php?topic=115.0(8) http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=%22information+wants+to+be+free%22&gwp=13 – 1 click
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If it’s August, it must be time to start thinking about our
Winterfeast Party coming up in December. For longer than we can remember, we’ve enjoyed the hospitality and good food at St. Gabriel’s Church. Some of the Board brought up the possibility of looking into a different venue this year. Thanks to Warren Shanahan’s hard work, we are building up credits at two senior centers in town. We asked our contact to look into using these facilities. If you have any opinions, or would like to help with planning the party, please contact me at
President@pc3.org.
