WHEN INFORMATION COLLIDES

THE INTERNET AND THE FRAGMENTATION OF INFORMATION

Ken Auletta,author and writer for "The New York Times",was going along just fine in talking
to the Google staff about his book,"Google:The End of the World as we know it",on C-Span.He was
very fair in both his praise of Google's foresight and it's insensativity to copyright holders of Book's
,Film and Television Rights,and Music Copyright owners.He even told them that he did sense
"Hubbris" amidst the companys workers and leaders.But for the most part he was fair and praised
much of what Google had achieved thru foresight that others had missed,a point i would second.
In one digression on search results which he mostly had praise for,he mentioned Googling
"Who is William Shakespeare?" or "Who was the real William Shakspeare?" and getting a 20 million hits ! I tried it myself and he's right.There are so many results,most of which don't deal with questions about Shakespeares identity,but just books about his plays and such.To get to a really
great book i read recently that does deal with myths about Shakespeare's identity,"Shakespeare:
The World as a Stage" by Bill Bryson,who has also appeared on C-span;i had to google "A Short
History of nearly everything" a more recent book by Bryson to find his Shakspeare book-which i
highly recomend.
Bryson's book does a fantastic job of de-bunking nearly all of the false mythology about who Shakespeare was and provides plenty of information to back-up that he was who he and others said he was.It details the time period in which Shakespeare plays were written and his fortunes rose in such a way that he becomes a much more real and understandable person.Someome who seems most capable of becoming the worlds foremost playright.It does this in a fairly small volume,which makes it even more valuble.Obviously Bryson went to a great deal of trouble to distill all the known facts from the flights of fancy that so many people still have about our dear William.So what does all this prove? Only that internet searches as wonderful and helpful as they
are are imperfect.That sometimes the most valuble resource to answer a question completely
escapes the search.How often this happens i can't say,but that it does and sometimes on a fairly
straightforeword question for now is a reality.I'm sure there's a simple solution out there just
waiting for someone to discover it.It's just a matter of time.Don't expect complete perfection.It
will no doubt escape us.Just a little more perfect union would suit us all just fine-for the time being.

written byPete Holly-2009-copyright-all rights reserved