I definitely agree with you. The web plus my trusty laptop has made a dramatic (and generally positive) difference to the way I discuss things with friends, or watch TV or a movie.

The internet is like a knowledge amplifier in this way – if I’m having an argument, now I can quickly back up opinions with facts. (And often find I was wrong, or at least that reality is more complicated and interesting than I first thought).

We do suffer from the “curse of IMDB” though: my wife can’t resist the temptation of opening up the laptop to answer the “what else was she in?” question when we’re watching a film.

@John Battelle: Alright, so you’ve garnered 51 responses to you post. Well, only 23 responses, after you strip out the way-to-many times that I responded. But still, a lot.

For example, one blogger writes:
“Battelle complains that Carr is afraid of thinking in ‘different’ ways, when in fact the article is very much about the inability to focus attention due to the randomization that the net injects into our thinking. Any business that is monetized by frequency (of visits) must attempt to increase that frequency.” http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/2008/06/google-koan.html

That has been my central thesis for a while, too. There are ways of designing the search interaction to get users to delve more deeply into results, to cross-correlate and to help us make sense of what we are seeing and understand the broader picture. But being able to engage with information on that level results in a decrease in frequency of new queries, which results in a decrease in the number of ads one can show.

Additionally, Nick Carr has 4-5 good blog post responses and anecdotes. This one was particularly compelling: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/06/more_food_for_t.php
Note the analogy to fast food (see also multiple McDonald’s comments above). Also note the comment about exploration vs. exploitation — I was trying to say something similar, above: http://battellemedia.com/archives/004494.php#comment_131787

So yes, you are indeed not alone. But it also seems to me that there a quite a lot of people that agree with Carr’s fundamental premise. Many more people than I actually expected. I thought that the blogosphere’s reaction would come out almost uniformly against Carr. Instead, quite a lot of people are agreeing with him.

So I would be interested in hearing your additional thoughts on the matter. And I’m still wondering what 20% time has to do with it.

Anyway, I’d see that the web is clearly one of the most human technological inventions. One example: we don’t have to learn arcane commands and syntaxes to use it. There’s a big difference between building an SQL query and using web search.

Furthermore, what’s the difference between reading a book (i.e. going through a set of pages), and browsing the web (likewise: going through a set of pages)?

Yes, I totally agree.

Have you tried http://quintura.com ?

I think that site is alot of fun…. (*)

nmw

(*) but actually I easily tire of keyword clustering :S (but still: the way they have done it is — I think — like *way cool*… how long before somebody buys them? or makes an agreement to “protect” their property? ;P)

Thus, we conclude that our quite simple interface-based query
elicitation technique results in significantly longer, and more
useful searcher queries in a Web searching task than typical
query elicitation, for a best-match information retrieval system.
Furthermore, we conclude that longer searcher queries result in
increased search effectiveness in general, indicating that more
words from the searcher describing the person’s information
problem results in better interactive IR performance. Taken
together, our results mean that getting longer queries from
searchers in a best-match Web searching environment is not
only possible, but desirable and useful.

This paper was published 5 years ago. 5 years. And what has Google done, in the meantime, to change its interfaces and algorithms to elicit longer queries, to improve user satisfaction and performance, so that users more often find what they need in the SERPs, rather than resort to clicking an ad? As far as I can tell, nothing. The Google interface looks exactly like it did in 1998.

Am I really expected to believe that the first interface that Google ever tried, over a decade ago, is really the best one that will ever be? That Google has tried* implementing query interfaces that elicit longer queries, and that every single one has failed, lending evermore credence to the belief that the 1998 interface is already perfect?

If we believe that, then Nick Carr is correct. Google has made us stupid.

—-

*(And if so, why have I never, in 10 years of using Google, seen any of these other interfaces? They were never tested on *me*!)

But I’m not talking about those sorts of problems. I’m talking about the fact that there are things for which Google has the ability to find proof.. but doesn’t want to because.. well, who knows why for sure. Maybe it’ll disrupt their business model?

@nmw: I don’t know if your call for a link was to Bertil, or to me. In case it was the latter, here you go:

http://sils.unc.edu/~dianek/belkin-sigir03.pdf

Citing the abstract:

Query length in best-match information retrieval (IR) systems is
well known to be positively related to effectiveness in the IR
task, when measured in experimental, non-interactive
environments. However, in operational, interactive IR systems,
query length is quite typically very short, on the order of two to
three words. We report on a study which tested the effectiveness
of a particular query elicitation technique in increasing initial
searcher query length, and which tested the effectiveness of
queries elicited using this technique, and the relationship in
general between query length and search effectiveness in
interactive IR. Results show that the specific technique results in
longer queries than a standard query elicitation technique, that
this technique is indeed usable, that the technique results in
increased user satisfaction with the search, and that query length
is positively correlated with user satisfaction with the search.