>Ever tried to look up some news from 12 years ago?
Internet Archive which is a lot easier to search in than going manually through microfilm.
The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
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Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#32Your father's books are real treasures. Were it my library, they would have a place of honor. I want to put your post in the context of yesterday's HN front-page post lambasting the EU for trying to build a better search engine. The bulk of the comments suggested that a government effort could never be as good as a commercial effort. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32915263#32916945 Your post is a strong counter…
>Google started as a DARPA project, and was a great engine while it stayed true to that ethos. It was the need to commercialize it, thus setting perverse business incentives, which has destroyed it. Google started as a what now? This is an interesting thing to say during a discussion of access to information. I'd be happy to read your explanation of Google's "DARPA roots", and your citations to sources explaining how…
It is indeed a fascinating read. Here you go!
https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
>A second grant—the DARPA-NSF grant most closely associated with Google’s origin—was part of a coordinated effort to build a massive digital library using the internet as its backbone. Both grants funded research by two graduate students who were making rapid advances in web-page ranking, as well as tracking (and making sense of) user queries: future Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
>The research by Brin and Page under these grants became the heart of Google: people using search functions to find precisely what they wanted inside a very large data set.
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#33>Ever tried to look up some news from 12 years ago? Internet Archive which is a lot easier to search in than going manually through microfilm.
Except that people on this very sight are fighting very very hard to ban scraping from sites like Internet Archive and keep propping up IP laws that make such libraries illegal.
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#34Your father's books are real treasures. Were it my library, they would have a place of honor. I want to put your post in the context of yesterday's HN front-page post lambasting the EU for trying to build a better search engine. The bulk of the comments suggested that a government effort could never be as good as a commercial effort. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32915263#32916945 Your post is a strong counter…
>Google started as a DARPA project, and was a great engine while it stayed true to that ethos. It was the need to commercialize it, thus setting perverse business incentives, which has destroyed it. Google started as a what now? This is an interesting thing to say during a discussion of access to information. I'd be happy to read your explanation of Google's "DARPA roots", and your citations to sources explaining how…
You also asked 'how they were "destroyed"'
I refer you to some interesting discussion here:
Google Search is Dying https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719 1561 points
Every Google result now looks like an ad https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 972 commments
Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136 1275 comments
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#35Your father's books are real treasures. Were it my library, they would have a place of honor. I want to put your post in the context of yesterday's HN front-page post lambasting the EU for trying to build a better search engine. The bulk of the comments suggested that a government effort could never be as good as a commercial effort. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32915263#32916945 Your post is a strong counter…
Uh, DARPA had nothing to do with the founding of Google. Brin and Page had NSF funding though Brin's graduate fellowship and the Digital Library Initiative, and that was before the official founding of the company. Reference: https://beta.nsf.gov/news/origins-google
You may (or may not) be right about DARPA, but you assert they were government funded.
And my main point is that government (funding) is the economically optimal approach for services which produce diffuse value.
See also the comment from marginella_nu in the post I linked to. Marginella is building a fantastic alternative search engine https://search.marginalia.nu/ Their view: "Arguably the biggest most unsolved problem in search is how to make a profit"
i.e., capturing the value produced.
kagi https://kagi.com/ attempts to do this with a paid tier. I hope it works for them, great product and really responsive team.
Bing tries to capture value by collecting the Microsoft tax; not exactly government-level, but on those lines.
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#36It has never been easier to share knowledge, and thus there has never been a greater time to be curious. Encyclopaedia Britannica is still there, and it's great . But there's also an army of content creators are there to teach you just about anything. If one source doesn't do it, you have more to choose from. Yesterday, I read an article about North Africa that mentioned in passing Qaddafi's underground river. A few…
It's really the curation that needs to be taught to everyone. A big dose of critical thinking skills is what we all need, because in earlier times you could tell the crappy ideas by the way they were packaged: crazy guy at Hyde Park Corner, dude with a megaphone shouting out passages of the bible, crappy home-made flyers. You could work backwards from "nutter is probably wrong" to why he was wrong. Part of why this worked was because it cost something to publish stuff, and so publishers would have a think about what they wanted to spend their resources on.
Nowadays everyone has figured out how to package the message, and it's super cheap to do so and get it out there. (Incidentally, actual packaging is the same now, crappy products used to come in crappy packages, but no more.)
So now to pick apart an argument you have to be a bit more aware of the actual content, and it's a bit harder to get to the bottom of BS.
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#37IMO the worst side effect of current web of knowledge is what I'd call the illusion of knowledge. When it was more difficult to access and publish information, that imposed a much higher bar on what was being consumed. These days, people watch a 10-minute YouTube video or read a reddit comment or twitter thread and believe (perhaps unconsciously) that makes them knowledgeable in said topic. They will then, in an abso…
> They will then, in an absolutely confident tone, display their expertise by answering questions and stating their opinion as if it was a fact.
The irony of talking about this on HN, the home of Dunning-Kruger effect.
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#38It has never been easier to share knowledge, and thus there has never been a greater time to be curious. Encyclopaedia Britannica is still there, and it's great . But there's also an army of content creators are there to teach you just about anything. If one source doesn't do it, you have more to choose from. Yesterday, I read an article about North Africa that mentioned in passing Qaddafi's underground river. A few…
I’m not sure you and the author are talking about the same thing. He mentions the fact you can’t even read the news from 10 years ago, the content has simply disappeared. No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The problem is not “everything, everywhere” or a lack of filters but the extreme commercialization of all content available, closed networks, the short life of URLs…
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Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure you and the author are talking about the same thing. He mentions the fact you can’t even read the news from 10 years ago, the content has simply disappeared. No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The problem is not “everything, everywhere” or a lack of filters but the extreme commercialization of all content available, closed networks, the short life of URLs…
Depends where you read. Also how do you read the news of 50 or 100 years ago - isn't that more difficult. I use UK news sites. BBC Guardian and Telegraph all have their old articles online
One of the functions of public libraries is to archive the news. One could browse weekly papers going back decades, either as hard copies or microfilm. There's a good chance major city libraries still do that, or have digital scans.
For example: https://www.chipublib.org/resources-types/newspaper/
Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web
#40I love old books like this !
I managed to salvage this one when my grand parents went away https://imgur.com/a/AFmTQv7
I don't think it's worth much but it's old and smells nice and feels good to handle.