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Steven J. Bell wrote a thoughtful, intelligent article for the Chronicle of Higher Education (temporary link here) comparing Google's fast and easy results to intellecutal fast food.
His thesis?
James Morris, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, has coined the term "infobesity," which nicely describes the outcome of Google-izing research: a junk-information diet, consisting of overwhelming amounts of low-quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers of equally low quality.
And a possible solution:
Together we must begin by developing search systems and interfaces that provide an appropriate balance between the quality and sophistication of library catalogs and good aggregator databases, on the one hand, and the convenience and ease of Google-like search engines, on the other.
[via LISNews]
Posted by Hilary at February 23, 2004 10:50 PM