steven bell writes \”John Derbyshire, columnist for National Review Online, in his Nov. 14 column \”The Age of Google\” give his readers the following advice: \”Throw out your Merriam-Webster, throw out your Fowler and Follett — throw away your whole shelf of reference books, in fact.\” You can probably guess where Google-fanatic Derbyshire is going with this column. That\’s right. Now that you can \”google\” all day, there\’s pretty much nothing else you need when it comes to finding information. Even though he does note that not everything in on the Internet yet, he states that \”A vast world of knowledge — all the knowledge in the world, in fact — is opening up to anyone with an $800 computer and an internet account\”. I did like one of Derbyshire\’s remarks. He said that in the old days if someone made an observation about what Kierkegaard said (or quoted him) he or she had probably actually read Keirkegaard. Now, says Derbyshire, anyone can fool anyone else by sounding knowledgeable when in fact he or she probably just \”googled up\” that information. You guessed it. No mention of librarians here. So much for that \”human search engine\” campaign. Read the whole column at:
Nationalreview.com \”
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