He Said, She Said
18 Feb. 2008
I've been doing a little research project recently on the origin of a particular quotation, and I've found that most sources out there are maddeningly terrible for this particular effort. I mean, truly, truly maddening. In my crankier moments, I ask myself how we as humans can expect to solve any of our problems if we can't even remember our own history. Theoretically easy history. Like who said what when. In my more charitable moments I remind myself that identifying the reality of a situation is actually damn hard, even if it doesn't make it any less frustrating. Sigh.
To take an example, I came across an unrelated quote today and Googled it out of curiosity. I ended up with the following ridiculous hodgepodge of crap attributions:
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
- Doris Lessing
- Just Lessing , not Doris (and another, from 1886)
- Louisa May Alcott
- La Bruyère
- Charles Seymour
- Dorris Tessing (yes, I'm serious)
- Jean Toomer
Doris Lessing is the most popular choice, but the quote was attributed to la Bruyère in a publication printed before Doris Lessing was even born. That, of course, doesn't say anything about the accuracy of the la Bruyère attribution - around the same time period, the quote was attributed to a Lessing, just not the Lessing. Basically, in this entire list, the only three possibilities that fit the time frame of the earliest quote I found are "Lessing," Alcott, and la Bruyère. "Lessing" could apply to Gotthold Lessing, Karl Lessing, or Otto Lessing, but I'm putting my money on Gotthold, based on the subject of most of his work. In an irony of ironies, the quote is attributed to Doris in a book right next to other quotes attributed to Gotthold.
And people ask why I question everything. An apt quote, indeed.
18 Feb. 2008 9:21 pm
one of the frustrating aspects of this era is the barrage of information out there, all on equal footing. Thus making it extremely difficult for those of us who search for accuracy. One of my interesting discoveries recently was a website called organized wisdom health (http://organizedwisdom.com/Home), a search engine for health information designed by experts, as way to provide people with accurate health information. A big problem was people were googling their diseases and symptoms and coming up with information that was inaccurate and possibly harmful.
Now, this is just one example of a specialized search engine, in which the information has been reviewed by experts. There are others out there.
Should google place websites on unequal footing based on scholarly review?
18 Feb. 2008 10:43 pm
Well, in an effort to continue questioning everything, I must also question most academics' belief that scholarly review is some sort of panacea to solving these problems, or that these problems didn't exist before the "information age."
Take the last link I provided (irony of ironies) to the Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations. Someone, somewhere, saw fit to print that in physical form, and not someone who was self publishing, either. Meanwhile, there are other excellent works out there that are not being published because, say, the people who wrote them had the misfortune of having girlie names. So, as far as I'm concerned, scholarly review has a lot to say for itself.
That said, scholarly review does serve a purpose, because, yeah, sometimes we need shortcuts. It is simply physically impossible to verify every single bit of information we come across in a day, and having someone we trust do it for us is a necessary evil. But I also find it an equally necessary evil to remain realistic about the quality of information we receive every day, even from those trusted sources. That's not to say I recommend skepticism (it isn't a sustainable position). Instead, I think of it as...I dunno...Humility, I suppose. An understanding that what we think we know, and what our erudite sources think they know, may turn out to be wrong, even under the best circumstances.
And, for the record, Google does already place websites on an unequal footing based on a variety of factors. The top level domain (.edu, .gov) is one of them, and the number of links going in is another. If Google were to add those two things together (number of links from .edu), would that qualify? Perhaps it already does. Its algorithm is always a bit of a mystery.
19 Feb. 2008 2:17 am
Dammit, I was lying down to try and get some shut eye and couldn't stop thinking about your question (which, by the way, I know full well I did not answer). So, to answer your concerns about oodles of information on equal footing a little better:
I am not entirely sure that academia's lament that all information is treated equally now is correct (I say "academia" and not "your" because I hear this statement pretty regularly from academic circles, so I've come to associate the sentiment with that particular demographic, of which you are de facto a part). I think what is really freaking people out so much is that 1) previous lazy-man models for doling out worth to information are breaking and the lazy men aren't developing new shortcuts fast enough and 2) academia no longer gets to be the sole gatekeeper of its rarefied information.
Basically, academia and other information regals developed systems that identified their forms of information as the right ones, which was easy to do because all you had to do was look at the publisher's stamp on a physical object (book, journal) and that was good enough. That's what peer review really is, when it comes down to it. A way to give the reader a shortcut to know if the information they are looking at has been deemed good by a self selected elite. It means the reader, and academic, doesn't have to take the sweet time to really analyze what it is they are reading. And, sadly, it means that ideas that come out of alternative corners can simply be dismissed out of hand ("well, if it mattered, it would be published in ____, after all").
Now, however, people have been given the power to publish information in new ways, and academia hasn't invented a model for parsing that information. People have to do it themselves. On the one hand, this is a real pain in the ass, as I mentioned in the post. But there are ways to identify good information from bad. Footwork like I outlined in the post is one. Identifying the trustworthiness of the source from context clues, writing style, decency of argument, other works by same author, etc etc. You know. Information literacy.
So, since this response has thus far been a model of incoherence, I'll try to put it a little better (this is what happens when I think as I type, as opposed to before I type). What I am ultimately trying to add to my post is this:
1) I do not think this amount of misinformation is new, I just think that academia has to actually grapple with it now. They can't just look the other way anymore, because now their research brings them into contact with the dirty unwashed masses of ideas. Class warfare's a bitch, ain't it?
2) I don't want Google to be my gatekeeper, just like I don't really trust academics to do it for me either. But damn do I wish people would be better gatekeepers of the information they put out into the world. In other words, I want people to take a personal responsibility for the ideas they devise and repeat. This is actually probably what I am most getting at, and what I am personally struggling with myself right now (and what I suspect, if I go back and look at all my recent posts, they are all saying in one way or another). I don't trust other entities to filter information for me, but as a logical extension to that I must do my own part to put good information into the world, or the system breaks down.
3) Number two could probably be accomplished a lot better if we started teaching people how to have information literacy skills. But, ultimately, that would be taking a level of control away from academia. Teach people how to think for themselves?! Heavens, what would the academics do then.
By the way, did I mention to you that I'm reapplying to school? I just know they'll love this shit there!