If you wanted to know something, there was no Google or Wikipedia. You might be able to find out a basic fact if you had a set of encyclopedias. But most information, from important stuff to basic trivia ("who was in that movie?") was not available unless you had a reference book or went to the library and really searched.
Rumors, lies, media manipulation, thwarted by a few seconds of research. If more people bothered, it would be a better world.
SEO and its opposite, Googlewash [1].
Writing on the Googlewashing episode in the New York Times, Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg warned [2] that:
The rankings give disproportionate weight to opinions of the activists and enthusiasts that may be at odds with the views of the larger public. It's as if the United Nations General Assembly made all its decisions by referring the question to whichever nation cares most about the issue: the Swiss get to rule on watchmaking, the Japanese on whaling.
That seems quite prophetic now. And there are links between gaming the system for political gain then and now. [3]
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If you wanted to know something, there was no Google or Wikipedia. You might be able to find out a basic fact if you had a set of encyclopedias. But most information, from important stuff to basic trivia ("who was in that movie?") was not available unless you had a reference book or went to the library and really searched.
Rumors, lies, media manipulation, thwarted by a few seconds of research. If more people bothered, it would be a better world.
Off topic, but obligatory Monty Python piece http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
SEO and its opposite, Googlewash [1]. Writing on the Googlewashing episode in the New York Times, Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg warned [2] that:
The rankings give disproportionate weight to opinions of the activists and enthusiasts that may be at odds with the views of the larger public. It's as if the United Nations General Assembly made all its decisions by referring the question to whichever nation cares most about the issue: the Swiss get to rule on watchmaking, the Japanese on whaling.
That seems quite prophetic now. And there are links between gaming the system for political gain then and now. [3]
Oh, and the feedback loop [4].
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coine...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/weekinreview/18NUNB.html
[3] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/web_politics_how_rea...
[4] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/britannica_slaps_goo...