LISNews: Librarian News

\"Dazzlingly fast, vast, and precise, Google has made our lives appreciably easier. The first tool truly to make sense of the white noise that is the Internet, Google has become essential research for everyone from sales people calling on new accounts to single people taking another spin with blind-date roulette. It\'s reconnected long-lost biological brothers and battalion buddies. And who dials 411 anymore, when it\'s cheaper and faster on Google, and you don\'t have to explain to some headset-wearer in Terre Haute how to spell Worcester? Google saves time, saves face - it may even save lives. Instead of calling their doctor, some people type their symptoms into Google; a few have learned they were in the early stages of a heart attack.\"

\"But somewhere along the path toward changing our daily lives, Google changed our concept of time as well. It has helped make our past - or oddly refracted shards of it - present and permanent. That\'s a radical notion for a medium usually defined by its ability to constantly update itself.\" (from The Boston Globe)