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I didn't mean that that people aren't aware that such things as books exist, which of course would be absurd. I meant that people aren't aware of the serious a
by hackuser 9y ago
I didn't mean that that people aren't aware that such things as books exist, which of course would be absurd.
I meant that people aren't aware of the serious and scholarly books that exist because they don't experience the serendipity[0] of seeing them in particular, or en masse, in the bookstore.
[0] IIRC, serendipity is actually part of the design of library arrangement systems (Library of Congress, Dewey, etc.): Books are arranged so that you will happen across related information when you look for the book you came for.
- sedachv 9y agoThis point cannot be overstated right now. Recommendation systems like Amazon's are terrible for book discovery compared to looking at the rest of the shelf when you are getting a book at a library. There is a popular sentiment that the Internet has made knowledge discovery easier than going to the library, which in my experience is absolutely misleading, and is causing people to wrongly believe they have done research on a subject when in fact they have completely overlooked a giant corpus of published material.