Slashdot Mirror
ALA President Not Fond of Bloggers
Phil Shapiro writes "American Library Association president Michael Gorman is not too fond of bloggers and blogging. '[The] Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'"
Think of your photo collection and music collection. It's just another extension of that (think DIARY).
Don't let this guy read any Slashdot comments in that case.
Caution: this post contains generalizations. Most of which are, unfortunately, true.
Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press, and that they'll take the place of the New York Times and Washinton Post, and Newscorp will crumble at their feet.
Not with the half-assed misinformation and melodrama on the vast majority of the political and "news" blogs I've seen (to say nothing of the wild spitting and sputtering in the comments).
Not as long as they have no problem with their complete and utter lack of accountability of any type, and the vicious, one-sided partisan nature designed solely to incite vitriol in their groupthink audiences.
Not while they do nothing more than constantly pat each other on their virtual backs and reinforce their own worldviews and twisted near-conspiracy theories, ignoring any and all other sides of the story while simultaneously thinking of themselves as "open minded" and the only revealers of "the truth".
Blogs have a place in the world of information. And, like all sources of information, I'll concede that some can, in general, build a reputation for trust and accuracy. But many, particularly political blogs, have no regard for anything but the furtherance of their own agendas, taking things wildly out of context, and going on vindictive missions to build a one-sided case to paint the target of their ire in the worst possible light, without any consideration for any other motivations or other sides of the stories.
And they think they're the future of the media?
No fucking thanks.
Look out! The "Blog People" are going to burn books!
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
Not sure what
a random
paragraph is. The temperature here is 33 degrees
fahrenheit. I took a walk today. My HP
doesn't like talking to CUPS.
There are 3,472 green M&M's in the
jar.
man, I feel like mold.
I don't even understand how this person became President of such an organization. His writing styles is absolutely atrocious. He offers no supporting evidence for any of his points. He really needs to go back and take a basic college writing course. I would fail him if he was my student and turned in a paper like that.
Read complex texts? Ha! /.ers can't even be bothered to RTFA.
I'm not to fond of these ALA president people. From what I have superficially seen they make broad sweeping generalisations and knee jerk statements about others who they do not take the time to understand. I also heard that they don't shower very often and are cruel to puppies. There was a rumour going around that they get their tertiay education from discarded tissue boxes and glue sticks.
I do not have contempt for heretics who do not share my beliefs. I merely beat them mercilessly until they do.
share that is.
man, I feel like mold.
"It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs."
Kind of like slashdot readers?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
News flash: A brontosaurus is not too fond of mammels and live birth. 'The mammels (or their sublcass who are monkeys) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of being small, having a relatively large brain and the ability to withstand, say, a large meterorite striking the earth. Given the quality of their roars, I doubt that many of the mammals are in the habit of thundering across the primordial plains. It is entirely possible their survial needs are met through hair, live birth and quick adaptability.'
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.
Yo is sure to get schooled from my mad skillz. Oh by the way, this 3l33t haxor had oatmeal for breakfast this morning. Oh and here's a picture of my cat.
It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
On one level, blogs are intended for brief communications or thoughts that often revolve around a central theme, but not always. Often they are intended as a means for maintaining communication with family and friends or as a creative outlet. However, this guy has obviously not been very informed or is lazy about finding informative/interesting blogs out there like:
Kevin Sites whose reporting pioneered the use of the blog in combat reporting.
Dan Gillmor whose new efforts are targeted at grassroots journalism from sources exactly like blogs.
Or Chris Anderson's blog The Long Tail which discusses businesses, economic, cultural and political models whose goals are to take advantage of the significant portion of those populations underlying the distal distributions of a curve.
And many others whose careful investigation, research, thought and reporting go into the content on their blogs.
Oh, and then there are the blogs like mine........
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
Frankly, this assessment doesn't sound too far off to me. A major portion of understanding a field in depth is categorizing the raw data one has compiled in order to turn it into information. Blogs just aren't capable of doing something like this without sinking to the lowest common political bias.
A major strength of having access to a large library is actually having a librarian point out where to find a large body of information on the field you're interested in. But once you get there, the sheer volume of information precludes the possibility of a librarian introducing a political bias, though there might be a systematic bias in the publishing world.
After all, I am strangely colored.
As boring as it might sound...to me at least...my mom started from the ground up a yellow pages for librarians which was freely distrubuted and stayed afloat by librarian vendors paying to advertise in her free publication. She started it 14 years ago and She is selling it within the next two weeks because the market has run dry. The point of all this? Her buisness did just fine until google came along. Why do you need to go to a library and support them when you have a wealth of information at your fingertips? What is closer your pc which resides in your room, or the closest library? You do the math. This is just a case of someone who is bitter towards the "google" generation because it steals his buisness. Just ask my mom =|
In the case of bloggers: "First they don't read your blog, then they laugh at your blog, then that's pretty much it."
Comparing the "blogging phenomena" to the Indian independence movement is a fine way to illustrate your massive sense of self-importance, though.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen
Yeah, he does have a point:
Besides, I don't think we can trust the guy. Of course he sounds official. Er. Officious. He uses a lot of big words, like "antidigitalist" and "progressives" and "hubris" and "neologism" and "pillory"...
He's just bitter because the idea of mapping IP addresses to the Dewey Decimal System never caught on.
-- Gah.
If he is opposed to "inefficient search" then the Dewey Decimal system must infuriate him. Google is great for getting a rough idea of what is out there, occasionally it may lead you to something really worthwhile - but most of the time it only cuts down on the early legwork, something very worth doing.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Blogs are to the media what open source is to software...if enough eyes look at a story, the odds of a critical piece of information slipping through the cracks is drastically lower, even if the prose in question looks suspiciously like the product of 20 billion drunken monkeys. Case in point: Guckert-gate. A whole room full of professional journalists, who no doubt possess grammatical skills far greater than the average blogger, missed the obvius fact that the schmuck in the front row asking questions was a GOP plant. Leave the creation of literature to the literati...blogs are at their best when they keep the "real" media honest.
I hope he realizes that while most blogs aren't worth the bytes they are printed on in terms of content, there are enough gems that one can't write the entire concept off as a bad idea. In any case, judging bloggers by the quality of their writing largely misses the point--blogs aren't supposed to be a regulated, edited, meticulously researched medium of writing--they are a means of sharing thoughts with the world without having to jump through hoops. Whether the world listens, complains, enjoys the blog, takes offense to it, or feels that the author should have gingerly lucubrated every detail as if each entry were a Nobel Prize acceptance speech is beside the point entirely.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Haven't we all been in a social situation (out to dinner or a bar, for example) where a serious conversation starts up about a serious topic and what ends up happening is that the folks with the least informed opinions do much of the talking, whereas the ones with a more enlightened view say very little? There must be some facet to the human condition that predicates that ignorance breeds arrogance, and wisdom breeds restraint.
Our current U.S. political climate bears this out.
There are plenty of articulate and educated bloggers, certainly. But there are many many more who aren't. We should slow down and think more about the quality of our information, not just the quantity.
But seriously, who thinks blogs are where great literatire is to be found anyway? The best blogs-with-a-purpose seem to be the ones that report news stories the mainstream media won't cover. The blurring of the Tinfoil Hat as it were. Anyway, when I want good literature I usually turn to a book. For example in the wake of last weekend's suicide by one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, I decided to finally crack open a copy of Hey Rube given to me last year which I had not gotten around to reading. I found this in the Author's Note at the very beginning:
You don't need to wear a Tinfoil Hat these days to see that the plutocracy now in power in the U.S. controls the message and the media. Bloggers who attempt the lost art of Journalism can become a powerful force for truth and justice, keeping the old-guard media whores honest (if that's even possible anymore). But I don't think the ALA has to worry about dumbing down Americans' interest in literature. For 90% of the masses television finished that off decades ago.
I'm no blogging cheerleader, but the patronizing tone he uses is bound to alienate a less enthusiastic booster of the blogosphere than I. He comes across as an arrogant prig who's using his (extremely limited) bully pulpit to bash those about whom he admittedly (and rather proudly) knows little. I have nothing but regard for the ALA and love my local libraries, but this mocking, snobbish attitude isn't going to win anyone over to his side.
What I got out of it is that the president of the ALA is afraid that his way of life and his preferred methods af acquiring information are becoming less relevant, and rather than changing the way he and his association do business, he figures he'll stand up and mock the people who are changing things in hope that others wil listen. Nice try, man.
The fortune at the bottom of the page right now reminds me of another Lazarus Long quote that seems appropos of bloggers:
"Despotism is the idea that one man is smarter than a million men. Democracy is the idea that a million men are smarter than one man. Who decides?"
Why should I pay attention to what any blogger has to say? And why does the fact that there are a million bloggers change the answer to that question?
And of course, there's the old saying about opinions and assholes...
I read professional sites/magazines/newspapers because I have reason to believe that, due to the training and experience of those who run it, and those who report for it, what is published has a good chance of being approximately true, and approximately informed. While it is true (before others point it out) that this belief is becoming increasingly unlikely to be true, nevertheless I have NO such expectation for any random blogger's musings, and so I see no reason to read them, except perhaps for amusement.
Blogs as the future of journalism? I doubt it. I certainly fear it.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.
The word "blog" has existed for years now and has become so ubiquitous that most news channels, TV shows, magazines, and newspapers don't even feel the need to define it, let alone pick apart a word that practically everyone already knows the root of by now. This is like a radio DJ ranting about MTV in the '80s and starting his speech off by defining the term "television".
If you're just now learning what the word "blog" means and believe that the people around you have no clue what it could mean or where it comes from, you're at least a couple of years behind the times, and are far less qualified than the average American to speak about the subject. If Tom Brokaw could regularly use it during the news coverage the presidential election a few months ago without even bothering to define it, it's pretty damn mainstream.
It seems to me that blogs help people develop an understanding of the links between information. For that matter, I think the main value of blogs and homepages is the building of links between the blog and world at large. A well linked blog becomes a discussion with the world.
In someways, blogs are a welcome relief from published literature which can be a bit too introspective or polished. I do agree with the librarian who is dismayed at the hype given blogs. Everything in computers gets overhyped. Individual blogs like mine really mean nothing. In aggregation, they provide an interesting topology of the concerns of our culture.
They're both true, of course, but it's silly to forget either one in a debate.
...William Shatner?
I have on several occasions tried to find a book that covers some particular detail of something, and failed, only to later find it by accident in a different book that I wouldn't have expected to cover it. Mr. Gorman must never have had this experience, or he would welcome new tools to help him find relevant books.
I suspect that this is what the bloggers understand and have not been successful in conveying to him. But since I don't know specifically which blogs and bloggers he's referring to, it's hard to say.
I think we could use a little context here. Gorman had written an article. for the LATimes questioning the value of Google's search engine for books (as contrasted with say spending the money on a library). The position of the article is that information in context (i.e. in a book written by a researcher) is worth far less to someone doing research than a far greater quantity of facts without the organizational structure of a book.
Bloggers who focus primarily on
-- putting together collections of obscure references
-- often don't have formal training in their areas
objected to the classical approach to research that Gorman advocated.
I see this article as written response the blogs which attacked Gorman. As a society we could wonders on the library front for a fraction of the cost of projects like Google's; this is a point that no one questions. The real issue is what is the relative value of libraries as contrasted with digital information repositories.
Blogging proposes a very democratic model of information evaluation that any intelligent person given access to the information will be able to derive the correct conclusions quickly and easily. The classic approach argues that a guided program of study is highly advisable prior deviling into raw sources of information. In feeds in which you are an expert which approach do you think is more correct?
If the head of the ALA were a publisher, he would know that the overall quality of bloggers' work is no worse than the output of the vast majority of so-called "writers" who submit manuscripts. The fact that some people have talent and others don't is a trivial and uninteresting observation. His reaction sounds more like resentment that mediocre authors, whose work otherwise wouldn't be published, are able to attract large audiences on the web. Maybe he thinks they don't deserve it. Or maybe there's a crumpled up rejection slip in his wastebasket.
From the article:
While I don't share Michael Gorman's dismissal of Blog People's abilities (his "intellectual needs" comment is galling), I do think he's rubbed his fingers over a kernel of truth. The fact is, that blogging and online reading (ie, surfing the web) have largely edged out something else in my life: reading books. Not that I've given up the practice, but that I'm less inclined to do it than I used to be, and more inclined to lose large periods of time in front of the computer screen. (I do not say the medium is to blame; I want to avoid digital vs. paper catfights.) I suspect my behavior is related to a feedback loop of work/reward. Posting online requires relatively little work and yields relatively immediate reward. Reading online, similarly, is quick & easy compared to novels. I flatter myself that I monitor the cutting edge of news via the web--and I believe it is possible to do so, and Slashdot may even be an aid towards doing so--but in fact, I derive as much satisfaction out of a rousing debate on inane trivia (provided I win, or score points or prestige) as I do out of debating issues of real significance. The gratification of the moment doesn't care what the subject is, only that I'm reading/writing/evaluating...and getting attention.
Yes, you've struck a nerve, O Anonymous Coward.
There's a larger point too, having to do with attention span, that is implicitly raised in M. Gorman's comment. It may be that as I feed myself with digital snacks I to some degree lose interest in meatier works. It's easy to show off a little knowledge of calculus, should a discussion head that direction, and easy enough to look up on Google the innards of whatever physics question is the problem of the moment, since those are quick and work-free; it's much harder to sustain a quiet and real course of study on some difficult topic. A steady diet of snacks may gradually wear down my ability to sustain long-term learning and interacting.
I may have to curtail my participation herewith.
That here we are, creating an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs, with no attempt to build up to a complex document ...
Did Mr. Gorman just troll Slashdot??
If you honestly believe that CNN is left-leaning, I think you need to seriously re-examine your definition of left. American media has always been right-leaning. If you think otherwise, you need to do long-term comparisons of what stories were covered in the American media and the language that was used to cover them. You will find that the liberal media myth is completely false and that the standards of journalism have been pulled to the right by reactionary "journalists" like Bill O'Reilly.
Just because you're less right wing than Bill O'Reilly doesn't mean you're leftist.
What Future?
Blogs fill the same purpose that his little rant does. It lets people just say what they want, and people naturally gravitate towards blogs they find interesting. He may not call it a blog, and it lacks a feedback system, but he's essentially criticizing exactly what he's doing himself.
Blogs are glorified message boards and people like them because it's like having an auto+5 post. It's essentially reality TV for the Internet...so I guess it's reality internet.
It will not replace modern journalisim because modern journalisim will replace itself. At best it could make editorial pages less read.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I think what he fails to realize is that the benefit of blogs over mainstream press is that the amount of noise present directly equates to more information from which to sift.
In the sense of traditional information theory, noise is information (to simplify a bit). Without noise there is homogenization of signal equating to a lack of movement toward chaos or entropy. Information therefore is created by breaking down communication channels, altering the signal (in this case news) between source and destination. The creation of noise hence creates a dynamic system of information in which all elements are going toward a state of complexity.
Complexity = good.
When extrapolated toward blog vs. popular press, blogs present a situation in which subjective filtering and emergence from it creates the content, rather than content coming from one source.
It is a distributed publishing model which puts the onus of interpretation, use and distillation upon the reader rather than the propagator of said content.
So taking information theory and applying it to blogs, blogs create more dynamic states from which useful information can be gleaned, but it changes the practice of information dispersal to the extent that the hierarchy which typified the dissemination of information pre-Internet has been flattened and in some sense elimnated. No longer is there a differentiation between the reductive properties of grass-roots press and large press.
The issue I see with this guy is not that he is a Luddite, but that he is threatened by the breakdown of the hegemony imposed previously be the hiearchy created by movable type and the publishing industry.
Having read TFA, I find myself struck by nothing so much as how very much like a blog entry this alleged "article" reads...
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Most of the bloggers I know (ie, my livejournal friends) are in fact voracious readers. What they write in their diary is no indication of how much reading they do, how good they are at writing, or their level of education.
The worst offender on my friends list is in fact an English student in her third year of college. She works in a library and takes every advantage of her unlimited access to it. The serious writing she does is very good and she gets high marks for it in class.
But the fact of the matter is that a livejournal is just a diary you share with your friends. Historically, diary entries have been kept short in no small part because to do otherwise is very time consuming. The fact that you are keeping a diary at all is an indication that you are embarking on some kind of adventure and actually going about living your life. As such, you don't have a lot of time at the end of the day to write much, unless your living is made as a writer.
I encourage Mr. Gorman to read the diaries of others and stop passing judgement on those who write them. He might stumble upon the plain fact that diaries usually aren't written by professional writers, but have their own worth anyway.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
"Ask them what the real difference is between THOSE networks and they really can't tell you."
No, it's actually rather easy to spot the difference between Fox News and the rest of the networks.
The reason I find Fox News offensive is not simply because of any leanings in political spectrum (although I do think it is a right-leaning group); the reason I find Fox News so abhorrent is because it reduces complex issues into single-phrase arguments pundits can shout at each other on TV. I agree that CNN and other shows have these kind of things too - the earliest one I can remember is the McLaughlin Group on PBS I think (not sure). However, Fox News takes it to a new extreme.
Watch Hannity & Colmes sometimes; it makes your stomach turn to see issues that the American people need to see all nuanced facets of reduced to a Left vs. Right shouting match. Guess what, not all issues are as simple as that, and it's a travesty to the public to make it so. Listen to NPR news or the BBC sometimes, and tell me their careful, measured, discussions of the economics of the Social Security problem aren't far more informative and stimulating.
Fox hypes news using constant flag waving and important-sounding music while stripping the public discourse of any semblance of reason. THAT is why I dislike Fox News.
SMS, instant messaging, E-mail, message boards and blogs are all from time to time trashed by professional writters for not containing the same standard of writting as the traditional media, like (paper) letters, newspaper letter columns, and diaries (by grown-ups).
That is probably true if you look at average numbers. Well, apart from newspaper letter columns, which I find slightly below Usenet posts in quality. And we don't really know about the private media, we tend only to see written diaries and letters from famous people.
However, they also mean that a lot more people are writting than ever used the old media. Honestly, how many in here would ever consider writting to a newspaper letter column? And would you write long, carefully formulated letters to friends and family if you could not use SMS, IM or email? And how many of the bloggers among you would write a diary instead?
What the professional writters are really complaing about is that they no longer have a virtual monopoly on writting. It is now for everyone. And of course, we are getting better at it. Much of the communication (like here) is done in public, and we can see which formulations get the point across and which doesn't. So while the writting may not become beautiful, it slowly becomes effective. At least for those who have anything at all to contribute.
The other part of it is that we become less impressed by the written word, now that it has become a daily tool of our own. We are much less likely to believe in something because it is written (in a a paper or book) than our parents were. Since we know no special skills are required to write and publish, we intuitively know that the written word is no more trsutworthy than the spoken word.
This also annoyes the professional writters, even if they don't know it.
Correct. Everytime I hear the ignorant claim of "the liberal media" I politely ask the person who said this to tell my how Judith Miller got all those NYTimes (you know the big gay liberal paper) front page pieces about Iraq's WMD from anonymous sources. If they plead ignorance I then ask them to show me ANYWHERE in say, Harpers or The Nation, where those liberal stories intersect at all with what's presented on CNN et al. If they again plead ignorance then I ask them to debunk the propaganda model of media as described, with many examples, in Manufacturing Consent.
The "liberal media" is a nice meme that helps right-wing politicians get their way and keeps their supportoers from experiencing too much cognitive dissonance. its also completely and utterly false. Bias for all commercial media outlets can be traced to the ownership of that media outlet, profitability, nationalism, and fads.
Could be. It could also be that they present an at least reasonable approximation of the truth. Someone as obviously objective as you can see that's a much more likely explanation than some vast left-wing conspiracy, yes?
The reason why Fox News is KILLING the others is because of the obvious difference in reporting. And if you can't understand that mindset, then you're probably still in shock over the election too.
Fox News does well because it panders to those who believe that screaming louder and drowning out opposing viewpoints makes them correct, and that there is only one side to every story and theirs is it. It's not a methodology which appeals to those who are intelligent or educated (in the classical sense), but certainly seems to do well in today's America.
Fox isn't really killing the others, btw, because there are no "others." It's only watched by those who have already made up their minds, and seek only to hear confirmation of their preconceptions. It therefore by definition does not directly compete with news networks (to whom I believe you were referring) since that is not what it is. It is an entertainment channel which seeks to profit from the unfortunate reality that narrow mindedness and intolerance will always be preferred to critical thought and fact by those who are ignorant and lazy.
And yes, there are many who are shocked by the outcome of the last American election, although I can't count myself as one of them; it turned out much as I expected. The difference between me and those who were surprised is that I realize the "average American" would no more know how to form a coherent and critical thought than a baboon would know how to evaluate Shakespeare, as you have so eloquently shown.
The basic problem many on the Left have with Fox is that it's not the party line that is CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS.
No the problem the Left has with FOX News is that they just plain lie. For example, search google for "global climate change site:foxnews.com" and of the top-10 results you get 7 opinion pieces making up random crap about climate change... everything from "more research is needed" to "the alarmist U.N.". The other 3 articles portray global climate change reasonably because they are written by the Associated Press.
Try the same for the sources you say are just reporting the "party line" and you get completely different results -- not even one single opinion piece and no bias (the articles are just reporting the science). If the facts happen to agree with what the liberals are saying that isn't bias, that's the liberals just being correct.
I mean the first search I try and the results for FOX News are 70% opinion whereas for the supposedly biased networks are 100% news. I mean wake the fuck up, FOX News is a propoganda machine and that's it's purpose. The reason it is successful is that there are a lot of uneducated Americans that like to think they are right.
What amuses and annoys me about Michael Gorman's comments (and yes, I did read them and understand them) is how arrogant they are. Gorman, as President-Elect of the American Library Association, is not just proud enough to say how much smarter he is than other commentators about managing information. No, he's proud enough to dream of telling Google how to manage their money. He's proud enough to characterize a whole class of people intelligent enough to operate a computer as mouth-breathing idiots.
Best of all, he's very proud of how the Universal Bibliographic Control scheme he endorses will solve the world's information access problems. Now please understand: UBC doesn't actually give anyone access to source materials. In point of fact, it seems to be a scheme for trying to assemble a meta-bibliography---in other words, a list of what printed materials you could read if you could get your hands on them. This is unlike Google, an organization crass enough to actually digitize the text of books, to put you one click away from the primary source of the information it indexes, and to maintain backup copies of that information against the loss of the primary source. It is unlike Project Gutenberg, an organization that has already published a huge number of digitized texts that are now available to anyone with Internet access. It is unlike even the bloggers, who at least make their own work fully available online. Gorman apparently has the more limited goal of indexing materials without providing access to them, while mocking the efforts of these other organizations to provide access.
On the offhand chance that Michael Gorman is reading this, let me make my position as clear as possible. I am a scientific research and (if I do say so myself) a fairly literate writer. I use Google, Wikipedia, Citeseer, Project Gutenberg, and other online information resources on a daily basis, because I've found them to be quite effective for me. I read about five fiction novels a month. The last time I used a library card catalog was about 6 months ago. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the comprehensiveness of my University library's bibliography, and everything to do with the paucity of its actual content.
I support our American public libraries, because I think they're an important bulwark in our fight for free speech. In terms of effectiveness in serving my needs and the needs of my family and friends, they are so bad that I fear for their future. Mr. Gorman, please keep in mind that when public library funding comes up for public discussion, your comments, especially given your position, are extraordinarily unhelpful. So, in the jargon of the "blog people" you so despise, please STFU.
I don't see the two options as mutually exclusive. As things stand, traditional bound books still maintain a host of advantages over newer electronic delivery media (including portable e-book readers/tablet PCs) primarily in terms of superior resolution, lower power requirements, and a highly intuitive, tactile user interface which enables easier random-access than any software mechanism yet devised. On the other hand, digitized works offer other advantages, including complete-text searchability (though one might argue that a well-compiled index can sometimes provide more meaningful search capabilities than simple text-matching) and remote access to vast bodies of written material with minimal storage-space requirements. In a perfect world, I'd have equal access to both.
(And yes, people who "don't read classic literature" are, perforce, less completely educated -- or at the very least, less cultured. I make no claims regarding intelligence, however.)
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
but this mocking, snobbish attitude isn't going to win anyone over to his side.
It won me over. At least, upon reading it I found that my personal view of blogs and bloggers was much closer to that of the ALA president than that held by many bloggers themselves, and that the ALA president had expressed his view in a way that both indicated he understood the situation and was in itself well stated.
So it comes down to what, exactly, the goal of this piece was. If the point was to express something, it was a success. If the point was to express something and have readers finding they agreed with it, it was a success in that at least one person (me) was "won over" by it.
If the point was to impress self-identified "bloggers", it probably failed, but then I personally begin to suspect it's impossible to impress anyone who self-identifies as a "blogger" except by directly stoking their ego.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs."
Ohh like powerpoint slides?
Ohh like the Nasa department for Space Shuttles
I dunno; at least on TV, the right seems to have the edge (*cough* Bill "Shut Up" O'Reilly *cough*) on angry shouters. You can certainly find yammering harridans on both sides of the fence, but I don't remember any major CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN figures screaming at their guests to shut up.
Then again, I don't have TV, and I hear about these things second-hand through blogs.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The difference seems to be that paragraph-long texts are generally not even available in print media.
In fact, print media are so ritualized in their formats that only particular specific lengths are allowed. For instance novels are very unlikely to be published if they are too long or too short-- all but the very highest rung of authors are unable to fight their editors' demands to conform to the standard length.
I think on the whole I prefer to be free of that sort of stifling limitation, both as a writer & a reader, but of course like all freedoms it does come with a matching responsibility: to take over for ourselves the task of judging what is worthy of our attention, & not get drawn into dead-ends & mounds of trivia.
<3
If you were my sig, you'd be reading yourself right now.
The difference between a dinner conversation & a web conversation is that here you can tune in whoever you want; it's not possible to drown someone out. A hundred thousand ignorant bloggers screaming at the top of their lungs won't stop you from reading whoever you want to read, exactly as if everyone else wasn't there.
<3
If you were my sig, you'd be reading yourself right now.
Making vague accusations about people's intelligence is intellectually equivalent to calling them idiots. The entire piece is the academic equivalent of an escalation of a "no, you're stupid" playground taunt. Frankly, he should be embarassed about the immaturity of the whole thing, and he likely will be when those who he considers to be his peers call him on it. You know you're an important troll when your trollish screeds get posted to the Slashdot front page.
There are a lot of EDUCATED people (nationality is not important) that just like to think they are right.
Like just about everyone. The 'Confirmation Bias' is a characteristic of human psychology.
That said, my problem w/Fox "news" isn't that I disagree with the politics, it's the cheap pandering to the masses.
Example: Just before the invasion of Iraq, most news channels were, reasonably enough (given that most americans at the time, when polled, were against an invasion) discussing the 'should we/shouldn't we' issue. I flipped over to fox news and every commercial break ended with a big animated flag / F-16 / eagle montage and big shiny "Freedom on the March!" banner. C'mon guys... let's try for a semblance of restaint.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
"Those characteristics are ignored and excused by those who think that Google is the creation of "God's mind," because it gives the searcher its heaps of irrelevance in nanoseconds. Speed is of the essence to the Google boosters, just as it is to consumers of fast "food," but, as with fast food, rubbish is rubbish, no matter how speedily it is delivered."
And perhaps you have a better idea to search thousands of books in a matter of seconds other than digitising it and using the best search algorithm in this world! May be he wants us to search the catalogue and browse through thousands of books to find that one paragraph about something I wish to know for my paper. Talk about wastage of time. Even ancient manuscripts in India are being digitised with optical scanners by NIC so that it becomes accessible to scholars in the quickest manner possible. Also these pieces of history can be preserved for longer periods if kept away from the hassle of observation every other day. I believe the same goes with books too.
"If a fraction of the latter were devoted to buying books and providing librarians for the library-starved children of California, the effort would be of far more use to humanity and society."
Same might have been done in case of Iraq and Afghanistan too. But considering that the threats were true, if the wars were not waged, then another building would have collapsed or a nuclear bomb would have hit LA. My point is if we want to preserve our books and history and learn in the quickest manner possible, we have to bring technology into consideration. The only thing static in any field is change.
"It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs."
... like journalists?
You mean
There is much more to librarians and scholarly writing than card catalogs. I suspect that many librarians see the class of librarians as social structure charged with selecting filtering that ideas that will seep into the culture at large.
A great example of this filtering can be seen at University Libraries. A researcher pointed out to me that my local universities had almost two full bookcases dedicated to studies of Marx, and not a full shelve concerned with Benjamin Franklin. The researcher thought this odd for a library in the United States. Librarians take their filtering responsibilities seriously. Blogs, forums, online bookstores and whatnot pose the threat of democratizing the great filters librarians put in place.
The librarian article seems concerned with blogs v. the press. I never had the illusion that blogs would lead to the elimination of main stream press. Hell, a good third of all the blog posts in this world reference published article. Very few mainstream press articles point to blogs. This assymetry will always favor the press.
Blogs pose no threat to the press. They do pose a great threat to the cultural filters put in place by librarians.
If the President of the ALA has such a low opinion of bloggers, perhaps his organization should stop giving so many major awards to them.
I think what he actually meant to say was something along the lines of:
Carol Brey Casiano is the current President. This guy is the boob in waiting, and should shut his piehole until he's the actual President. Not to mention that most of the librarians I know have all but given up on ALA as a national organisation.
I can understand why people have trouble groking this. It's hard to wrap your mind around. But the internet is VERY VERY large. By even the most conservative estimates, there are many millions of blogs, with many more starting by the second.
There are numerous blogs about any subject imaginable. There are at least three dozen blogs written by emergency medics. Are these "good"? They're just "what [they] do for a living," it's true, but what they do for a living is emergency medicine.
(Come on, you know you're curious.)
There are blogs by Senators, blogs by censored Nepali reporters, blogs by angsty teenagers in countries that you know little about.
Reading a few blogs at random & then dissing the whole concept is like skimming a cereal box, a drug store receipt, a toothpaste ad & a bookjacket blurb & then pronouncing: This "written word" stuff is useless crap!
<3
If you were my sig, you'd be reading yourself right now.
Talking about the content of "blogs" is as ridiculous as talking about the content of "books"-- as if there is something meaningful that can be generalized about the group. There's a boatload of bad writing on blogs just as there are in the pages of the journals in Gorman's hallowed halls of periodicals. There's also a lot of great writing to be found in both places.
Gorman is responding to a select group of bloggers who chose to attack him because he doesn't think Google should be nominated for sainthood. I think he underestimates the power of searching and random access...
But the real sadness here for those of us who love libraries (I do, and I support them by using them and contributing financially) is that he unfortunately represents a very real and powerful part of the administrative apparatus of most libraries. These people don't understand that the roles of libraries, repositories, and librarians are radically changing. I don't mind the whining of the fossils-- I even appreciate a bit of the productive tension between the white-gloved, shhhh-ing blue-hairs and the stinking rabble of the Internet-- but I feel for the younger set getting their relatively useless Library Science education at institutions run by the traditionalists. They might as well get a degree in phrenology or alchemy...
99% of everything is crap. Blog are no different. This is their only problem. Could everyone please now shut the fuck up about blogs? Thanks.
To quote his rationale:
Blogging can spread the word, but references to printed material carry a lot more weight [no pun] than an html page full of supportive links.
Anyone interested in how this free speach thing corrupts society on a wider scale through disinformation, should go to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London.
There you will see the Evangelicals preaching to their convverted congregation who turn up to support and cry Hallelulejah at the orchestrated time. You will also see a drunkard with a small footladder arguing that "G-d is a Lesbian". There are people listening. Ruin of society does not result.
Note, actual Speakers' Corner content may vary.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
This antidigital windbag doesn't have a clue what he's talin' about. Clearly he's only concerned with the job of stupid librarians who can be easily replaced by Google vast array of Linux boxes running perl and python. If this jerk had ever been root on a box he'd understand the situation he and the rest of his library sissy friends find themselves in. He'd soil his trowsers if he had a clue about what a beowulf cluster could do to him. I'm so sickandtired of people blasting my blog, the blog subculture, the fact that blooggers are the new digerati, the new press, the new way to a free open and open society. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a affilliatted with the RIAA, MPAA, SCO or Microsoft. He even contradicts himself in his own rambling babble saying "If a fraction of the [Blog People] were devoted to buying books and providing librarians for the library-starved children of California, the effort would be of far more use to humanity and society." Idiot! Everyone knows the only thing kids go to library's for are the open access to computers which means pr0n and war3z.
Bottom line, just because my blog isn't censored by the neocon right wing fascist fox & friends loving librarians doesn't mean everything I've said about Bush, the RIAA, my water cooling, Open Source as a way of life, and why Paris Hilton is too hot to hate, but too dumb to love. Editors, libraries, congresscritters, all of that is meant to eliminate free speach by a society bent on taking over other cuntries' oil so they can destroy the world with toxic air polluttents (join the Kyoto protocol or I'm moving!) I for one say no.
Bottom line, What he doesn't understand is that blogs aren't about being right or wrong, that doesn't matter in the slightest bit. The point of blogs is to expand the minds and thought namespace of the readers of the blogs, to incense them and give them a sense of holy ignorance and anger that they can use as fuel for seeming important, informed, educated, and as if they've got all the right answers. My blog is like a gas stations for your ego. Stop by, fill up, and contribute back to and open society that will take what they like and what is useful to them and add it to their own thoughts, and ideas, and then give it back. It's the GPL for your mind! But this guy can't see himself as anything but the gate keeper to information, there must be hard copy books stored in his library so he can "sssssshhhhhhhhh!" you when your IPod is up too loud.
In the the end, you can't burn 1s and 0s, but paper and librarians burn like a mutherf***er.
In the US they have the Republicans, which are just like our Tories, and they also have the Democrats, which are just like our Tories. For those outside the UK, the Tories are our right wing party.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It has happened to me a number of times that I've been searching for information on a problem, like hot pixels on my digital camera or solutions to obsecure software problems, and come across the answer on someone's blog.
Frankly, I'm pretty happy that blogs exist, since the whole CMS thing lowers the threshold of Web publishing enough to allow people who can't be arsed with HTML to write stuff like that up. It takes a bored kind of person to bother designing a web page entirely around a five minute cure to a software problem, whereas a person with a blog will often just cut and paste a few lines. Untidy, ok, but sometimes handy.
I don't really understand his concern. He writes in reference to what an average person might do after doing a google print search:
If speed isn't essential to scholarly research in "the real world," why won't scholars continue to use his and other librarian's services? Google Print will cater to those people who won't go to the trouble of requesting books from other libraries and would, in the absence of a service like Google Print, would otherwise miss out on the information completely instead of getting it in at least in snippets.In any case, Google's service isn't positioned as an information gathering resource anyway. It's supposed to be used to find books you might be interested in, and it works quite well at that. I've personally gone out and acquired copies of three books (at a library no less!) as a direct result of google print searches.
Sounds a bit like me.
;))
"Ritterburg und Fürstenschloss" - Excavation-report from the Oberveste Passau (mainly 15th up to some some 18th century). It's a bit dry, but it has a lot of nice pictures
"The Medieval Horse" - Excavations from London. Same style as above, hundreds of pictures and descriptions of finds.
And then of course, "Ensel und Kretel" from Walter Moers. A Fairy Tale.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
While his tone is dripping with condescension, not everyone who writes a blog is worthy to have their thoughts read. I write my blog for the sake of friends and relatives, and some people find my words either interesting or infuriating. I wouldn't deign to assume that I am at the vanguard of a new type of media content distribution paradigm as some people do. Over at K5 there's a hack piece on the blogosphere just about every week, and they all have the same conceited notion that blogs will revolutionize the world. I think that often we, the technorati, get so wrapped up in the splendor of what technology can do, that we tend to overestimate what it will do. Todays predictions of a new media format through wikis and blogs are analagous to the flying cars and domed cities of the 50's.
They become fractious and ultimately divided forums that are the 21st century's version of the 18th century op-ed in that high-tech medium of the day... the printing press.
'[The] Newspapermen (or their subclass who are interested in dailies and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of yellow journalism and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief... Given the quality of the writing in the newspapers I have seen, I doubt that many of the newspapermen are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'
How wrong that sounds today.
He reads like a luddite blueblood snob. I enjoyed the article so much, it might actually be satire. I'm going to send a terribly illiterate, blogish flamemail to mailto:michaelg@@csufresno.edu and I think everyone else should too.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
The trouble is, no one I know who does or ever did run such a site has ever done this. I did it whenever I posted a link to something I wrote on USENET, and people I knew (hardcore geeks, most of em) thought I was a little weird for doing it (and some of them thought that about me posting to USENET too).
Nowadays you can't do that with most blogs, which are hosted on servers not owned by the "blogger". And "blog" has become so broadly applied that people now call any page written in a first-person singular tone that allows feedback a "blog". Sorry, your LiveJournal page is NOT A BLOG. It's not anything particularly special or worthy of a special name, unless maybe you're Linus Torvalds or John Carmack or somebody else whose every word people hang on with bated* breath.
It's time to face the facts. The term "weblog" was nonsensically conceived to begin with, even more nonsensical in later application, and is now so diluted as to be essentially meaning-free anyway. It denotes no useful categorization. The only thing in its favor is that it was the first term to come into existence to denote what was, at the time, a usefully-demarcated subset of online content. Simple inertia should not rule the day and I for one move that we begin the hunt for a new, more-appropriate term.
* Not a typo. "Baited breath" is incorrect and in fact nonsensical usage.
-- Old Man Kensey
Phil Shapiro writes "American Library Association president Michael Gorman is not too fond of bloggers and blogging. '[The] Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'"
First of all, let's see how well Mr. Gorman and his ilk do solving a quadratic equation.
Try this:
Given the quality of the mathematics used by your cronies, it is unlikely that many of the Gorman Gang are in the habit of sustained computation. It is entirely possible that your analytic needs are met by an accumulation of sloppy analysis and poor numbers.
Interesting, isn't it?
Blogs are not a threat. Gorman's elitism is. Expecting all people to write like Heinlan, Joyce, Homer, etc. is illogical. Furthermore, many grammatical errors do not affect meaning of the words (not a excuse for bad writing). This is because the English language is 50% redundant. You'd know this if you'd step outside your narrow view. Of course, this (50% English language redundancy) was discovered by Claude Shannon, the daddy of information theory. One of those infotech fanatics!
I wander what would happen if the Gorman Gang's math and programming skills were held to the same level as Slashdot members. I can hear it now:
I think a preference for Marx represents thinly veiled anti-Americanism, or at least American liberal guilt.
Or maybe you're a little paranoid?
I think the "preference" for Marx coverage over Franklin coverage in university libraries has to do with the fact that Marx is covered in a lot more college courses. He's in history courses, philosophy courses, economics courses, poli sci courses...
Yes, Franklin was influential in the founding of the USA, but his impact on the world as a whole was not as great as that of Marx. Marx's ideas inspired whole movements and political shifts, revolutions, demonstrations, literature, and a lot of pot smoking uni students.
We're not discussing who is more worthy here. We're discussing how the world today was shaped by ideas, and Marx is one of the absolute biggest names out there. He's rightfully discussed in a lot of college courses and a lot of differing sources on him are necessary.
If you'd like, compare the number of items in a public library. The one I work for has 47 items on Benjamin Franklin and 4 on Karl Marx. Why is this? (I'll give you a hint: I don't think it represents thinly veiled anti-European sentiments.) It's because a lot more members of the American public want to read about Ben Franklin's life, and a lot more elementary and high school kids do reports on Ben Franklin.
A good library's contents are driven by the needs and desires of its patrons. Treating coverage of Marx and Franklin as indicative of the beliefs of librarians is laughable.