4 ms·

> A national card catalogue system was the original “search engine” — one that ... was truly democratic. I don't think I get how a digital library catalogue is

> A national card catalogue system was the original “search engine” — one that ... was truly democratic. I don't think I get how a digital library catalogue is less democratic than an analogue one? Is this just a poorly thought out and tossed off claim or is there something I'm missing.

lr4444lr 9y ago
I think the implied point is that somehow telecom business or software design wizards are meddling with what the user sees in digital catalogues, in contrast to the Dewey Decimal, LoC, or other supposedly more neutral topical classification. It's still a tossed-off claim, and I wouldn't even agree anyway under the best good-faith understanding of what he's trying to say.
philipkglass 9y ago
Maybe the author never learned that governments and academic institutions still catalog books and offer online search tools for book collections free of advertising or profit motive. The lamentations seem to come from an alternate timeline where Amazon bought all the public libraries and shut them down to push more Kindle sales.
Millennium 9y ago
The article isn't very clear on this point, but I think that at this particular juncture, the author isn't so much lamenting "analog versus digital" so much as "public versus private". It's an awkward fit in an article like this.
gozur88 9y ago
"Democratic" seems to be one of those words that's lost its meaning. I'm not sure it means much more than "I like this thing" now.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Self-reinforcing productivity differentials.
inimino 9y ago
'The original "search engine"'. What you're missing is what "search engine" means to the general English-speaking population. Google is a search engine. There's nothing about a digital library catalogue anywhere in that sentence. The comparison being made is between looking up information in a card catalog in an institution created to serve the public interest, or asking your query of the world's largest advertising company.

lr4444lr 9y ago

I think the implied point is that somehow telecom business or software design wizards are meddling with what the user sees in digital catalogues, in contrast to the Dewey Decimal, LoC, or other supposedly more neutral topical classification. It's still a tossed-off claim, and I wouldn't even agree anyway under the best good-faith understanding of what he's trying to say.

philipkglass 9y ago

Maybe the author never learned that governments and academic institutions still catalog books and offer online search tools for book collections free of advertising or profit motive. The lamentations seem to come from an alternate timeline where Amazon bought all the public libraries and shut them down to push more Kindle sales.

Millennium 9y ago

The article isn't very clear on this point, but I think that at this particular juncture, the author isn't so much lamenting "analog versus digital" so much as "public versus private". It's an awkward fit in an article like this.

gozur88 9y ago

"Democratic" seems to be one of those words that's lost its meaning. I'm not sure it means much more than "I like this thing" now.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Self-reinforcing productivity differentials.

inimino 9y ago

'The original "search engine"'. What you're missing is what "search engine" means to the general English-speaking population. Google is a search engine. There's nothing about a digital library catalogue anywhere in that sentence. The comparison being made is between looking up information in a card catalog in an institution created to serve the public interest, or asking your query of the world's largest advertising company.