Gray Lady vs. Internet, Part XLII

David Card | March 26, 2006, 12:41 PM

What does boolean logic have to do with literacy? A Times op-ed piece suggests online search is responsible for a decline in reading skills. Absolutely absurd. Librarian skills, maybe, but that's not literacy. I think what the author is actually arguing is that popular results are less academic, accurate, or literate. Good thing those Times staff columnists aren't available to the masses!

Google modestly declares its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But convenience may be part of the problem. In the Web's early days, the most serious search engine was AltaVista. To use it well, a searcher had to learn how to construct a search statement, like, say, "Engelbert Humperdinck and not Las Vegas" for the opera composer rather than the contemporary singer. It took practice to produce usable results. Now, thanks to brilliant programming, a simple query usually produces a first page that's at least adequate — "satisficing," as the economist Herbert Simon called it.