Light Blogging Ahead

I've not been graced with any new appellate decisions to dissect this week, though I'm sure they're coming soon. But I don't think I'm going to be checking in much in the next two days or so, given opening night is now looming over me. I'll be back Monday with the full report, if not sooner.

Go to sidebar. Check links. Way cool stuff over there. Otherwise, here's a quick fisk I did of a smarmy anti-blog article. It actually deserves a lot worse than my surface-level treatment, but I don't have the time. From the Library Journal: Revenge of the Blog People

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.

My word, we are feisty, aren’t we? Unfortunately, the theory blogs exist solely to propogate the ungrammatical, unintelligible thoughts of the great unpublishable crumbles under close scrutiny.

(Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.")

I see. You not only hate “blog people,” the very word disgusts you. So long as you keep an open mind. . . .

Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.

McGoogle

I had heard of the activities of the latter and of the absurd idea of giving them press credentials (though, since the credentials were issued for political conventions, they were just absurd icing on absurd cakes).

You were not aware of them, and yet had already labeled them “absurd”. As I said, so long as you keep an open mind. . .

I was not truly aware of them until shortly after I published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times ("Google and God's Mind," December 17, 2004). Then, thanks to kind friends with nothing but my welfare in mind, I rapidly learned more about the blog subcultures.

My piece had the temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine. The Google phenomenon is a wonderfully modern manifestation of the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality. Hailed as the ultimate example of information retrieval, Google is, in fact, the device that gives you thousands of "hits" (which may or may not be relevant) in no very useful order.

Digitized books

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.

In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that 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.

Yep. It was the writings of the “blog people” that dripped contempt from every smarmy, over-written bit of priggish snobbery. I’m certain you would never stoop to such tactics.

To comment on the substance of your premise, I do agree that garbage information is garbage, no matter how quickly it is delivered. I do not agree that Google searches render massive amounts of unusable, irrelevant information – it depends on how well-versed the searcher is with Google and Boolean searches. I don’t find Google quite as useful and targeted as the more elaborate, expensive scholarly sites such as Westlaw, but it’s rare I can’t get the information I need, in context, inside of ten minutes.

I also must disagree with the idea that books may not be read on the screen. Although I prefer to read books physically rather than virtually, I have read many of the classics in an online format: 1984, She, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Phantom of the Opera, and so forth. Sites like Bibliomania, the Etext Center, and Project Guttenberg have been bookmarked to my favorites for years.

Why is it not possible that a Google search would render the information in context, and include a link to the full text on either a pay e-book site for copyrighted materials, or a free site such as Guttenberg for materials no longer under copyright restriction? You would consider that a bad thing because we can't get papercuts from turning the pages?

How could I possibly be against access to the world's knowledge? Of course, like most sane people, I am not against it and, after more than 40 years of working in libraries, am rather for it. I have spent a lot of my long professional life working on aspects of the noble aim of Universal Bibliographic Control—a mechanism by which all the world's recorded knowledge would be known, and available, to the people of the world. My sin against bloggery is that I do not believe this particular project will give us anything that comes anywhere near access to the world's knowledge.

I’d argue that’s a mischaracterization. Your position was not that Google’s project didn’t go far enough. You argued that the entire idea of googling books was silly:

“I am all in favor of digitizing books that concentrate on delivering information, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias and gazetteers, as opposed to knowledge. I also favor digitizing such library holdings as unique manuscript collections, or photographs, when seeing the object itself is the point (this is reportedly the deal the New York Public Library has made with Google). I believe, however, that massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one form of communication (electronic) will supplant and obliterate all previous forms.”

Why futile? Take my field – the law. Most attorneys do the majority, if not all, of their research through online databases these days. Essentially, digitized legal opinions. I agree that you can’t understand Case A without understanding what distinguishes it from Case B. So lawyer types set up databases designed to allow us to find and read both Case A and Case B, and C and D as well. Many firms and counties are now downsizing or entirely eliminating their law libraries, because the paper copy of the book simply isn’t needed. Doesn’t that rather undercut the idea that no serious research can be done without a trip to the library and lugging home several dozen hardbound books?

Of course, you differ in your approach to research somewhat:

“I do not share that opinion. The books in great libraries are much more than the sum of their parts. They are designed to be read sequentially and cumulatively, so that the reader gains knowledge in the reading.”

I get it. You open the card index to “A” when you’re done reading “Z”, you’re educated. No fair skipping ahead. If you want to know more about apples, you can’t skip ahead to “Washington” or “Fruit” without first learning about bananas.

Who are the Blog People?

It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. 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. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.

Of course, there’s no ignorant stereotyping going on here. . . .

At least two of the blog excerpts sent to me (each written under pseudonyms) come from self-proclaimed "conservatives," which I find odd because many of the others come from people who call me a Luddite and are, presumably, technology-obsessed progressives. The Luddite label is because my mild remarks have been portrayed as those of someone worried about the job security of librarians (I am not) rather than one who has a different point of view on the usefulness of this latest expression of Google hubris and vast expenditure of money involved.

Oh, you mean they unfairly extrapolated a motive from the elitist tenor of your prose? Imagine. How could they misunderstand? I mean, how prejudiced of them, to jump to the conclusion that you were somehow dismissive of digital media simply by the tone of your mild remarks about the “blog people” not being able to read big, long, hard texts . . . okay, I’m stopping here. I’m not Wonkette, people.

I'm no Antidigitalist

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.

Wait a minute. You’re upset because Google chooses to scan some of the world’s knowledge into an online format, providing access to people around the planet, instead of donating the money to the “library-starved children of California”?

You don’t honestly see how that might seem a tad, say, self serving?

“Come give money to libraries in California. Sincerely, a California librarian.”

Perhaps that latter thought will reinforce the opinion of the Blog Person who included "Michael Gorman is an idiot" in his reasoned critique, because no opinion that comes from someone who is "antidigital" (in the words of another Blog Person) could possibly be correct.

Yes,it’s the anti-digital prejudice that’s got the blog people riled. Not your complete lack of a defensible position.

For the record, though I may have associated with Antidigitalists, I am not and have never been a member of the Antidigitalist party and would be willing to testify to that under oath. I doubt even that would save me from being burned at the virtual stake, or, at best, being placed in a virtual pillory to be pelted with blogs. Ugh!

Whatever you say, Sir Robin.