Web or Encyclopaedia?

Which do you use? A book, a CD or the Web, when you’re looking for information? Are we now experiencing “Life According to Google”?

Over the last few days I’ve been involved in a quite heated debate on an online conferencing system, in which the two sides of the argument have constantly produced the addresses of Web sites that back up their claims and counter claims. You know that kind of thing – “Of course I’m right – go have a look at yeshesright.org and you’ll see I am”, answered by “no you’re not, check out nohesnotright.net which specifically says you’re not”.

All of which has led me to wonder whether we’re now entering the era of Life According to Google!

It’s very easy to use a search engine, whether it’s AOL’s Netfind (powered by Google, incidentally), Google itself, or any of the many other true search engines. You simply type in something that approximates to the phrases or words you’re looking for, and up pop links a-plenty.

Now, that’s not really a problem. The real problem is in how you go about sifting and verifying the morass of information (and dis-information) that a Web search can throw up.

It’s a feature of the Web that just about anyone can create a website – and the better looking it is, the more authoritative it seems. Yet there’s no guarantee as to the accuracy of the information on any Web site. Because it’s free and easy, anyone can publish more or less anything, and as long as it’s not libellous or defamatory, or likely to incite rioting, there it stays.

With search engine optimisation techniques, such as the ones we’ve written about here, the site at the top of Google’s list of results may not actually be accurate at all (and you may occasionally get a surprise at what appears there).

Learning

Of course, not all sites are mines of useless dis-information. There are rich veins of learned and well-researched data out there that you can make use of. There are sources of information that are unimpeachable, entertaining, well thought out and, sometimes, just too funny to miss! Thankfully, the useful and decent sites are in the majority – the bigoted and just plain mistake sites tend not to have too much lavish attention paid to their structure and optimisation, so they don’t feature too high on the search engine results lists.

So what impact will the likes of Google have on encyclopaedias, whether they’re in book or CD-ROM format? Well, as nice as a book is, the Web is usually quicker to give you a great wealth of information. Better yet, you’ll get to see many different takes on any given event – see it from both sides, if you like, and have a greater understanding of how things happened. History, you see, is always written by the victor!

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David Dorn