Opus 2017-120: Browsing

When I was a kid my parents ran into an encyclopedia salesman.  It may have been an extravagance but it became the source of endless browsing for me.  On rainy days I would sit down by the book shelf, pull of a volume and just start turning pages.  It was part of my education.

How is that different from smart phones and the Google search engine?  Can’t they access information and learn from the electronic media?  In a perfect world, yes.  In the world of data bases and selling ranking in the search process, no.  In a world of political correctness and Progressive, left wing censorship, no.  The information that young people see is carefully crafted by people with political agendas.  It is like only reading the L.A. Times or the National Enquirer.

Did encyclopedias have editors?  Of course they did.  Choices had to be made.  Many people won’t notice.  It even applies to dictionaries.  Years ago when I was still trying to educate young people I was trying to get dictionaries for my classroom.  For a brief time I was foolish enough to think I could actually go out and chose a set.  I ran into a problem.  I was covering the Constitution and wanted the students to define “ex post facto” and “bill of attainder”.  The dictionaries that the school district would provide me did not have those words in them.  If I were on the internet I would not even know they existed.

The current trend in Facebook and other social media to filter, not only searches but comments, shows us how weak modern sources are.  To delete information from the Encyclopedia Britannica would require an army of scissor wielding fanatics.  To do it from Google only requires on well meaning liberal pushing a button.

Don’t throw out the books.  Someday you may want to know what liberty means.

homo unius libri