lots of useful Google search tricks and syntax all in one place. I already knew many of these. But verbatim mode is new to me and addresses a major complaint I’ve had about increasingly fuzzy semantic search.
> There used to be a professional layer between most people and raw information. Librarians, researchers, editors, fact-checkers: people whose entire job was to understand how information was organized, who produced it, what motivated them, and where the gaps were in any given source. You didn’t need to think much about any of that, because someone else already had.
> That layer has largely dissolved. Search engines replaced the card catalog, algorithms replaced the reference interview, and AI summaries are now stepping in where a librarian’s judgment about source quality used to sit. What’s been left in place of all that professional mediation is a search bar and the assumption that you’ll figure it out. - https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/i/188856309/the-skil...
An unfortunate conclusion that smuggles in unwarranted good-old-days nostalgia to an otherwise excellent overview. The previous system that they're describing had serious problems, limited access to raw data compared to now, and could not have scaled up to the level of access to information that the internet provides.
The information environment prior to the early 2000s was quite terrible. We shouldn't pretend this was a golden age of truth-oriented gatekeeping, although there were certainly gatekeepers. There were a lot of misconceptions, errors, and unchecked biases on dead trees and in late 90s databases. The idea that those librarians, researchers, editors, fact-checkers were aligned with anything you might care about is also unsupported and dubious.
I distinctly remember being an 8 year old in primary school and not being believed by a teacher that tungsten existed. I was told I must be wrong about the density of this metal being higher than lead and unless I could find a book to prove it I should shut up about it. In reality I'd been to a museum and learnt all about wonderful wulfram and probably just must have been insufferable.
FWIW, this article isn't your usual substack slop. There are some Googling tricks and techniques here that I've never seen documented elsewhere, such as AROUND(n).
lots of useful Google search tricks and syntax all in one place. I already knew many of these. But verbatim mode is new to me and addresses a major complaint I’ve had about increasingly fuzzy semantic search.
> There used to be a professional layer between most people and raw information. Librarians, researchers, editors, fact-checkers: people whose entire job was to understand how information was organized, who produced it, what motivated them, and where the gaps were in any given source. You didn’t need to think much about any of that, because someone else already had.
> That layer has largely dissolved. Search engines replaced the card catalog, algorithms replaced the reference interview, and AI summaries are now stepping in where a librarian’s judgment about source quality used to sit. What’s been left in place of all that professional mediation is a search bar and the assumption that you’ll figure it out. - https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/i/188856309/the-skil...
An unfortunate conclusion that smuggles in unwarranted good-old-days nostalgia to an otherwise excellent overview. The previous system that they're describing had serious problems, limited access to raw data compared to now, and could not have scaled up to the level of access to information that the internet provides.
The information environment prior to the early 2000s was quite terrible. We shouldn't pretend this was a golden age of truth-oriented gatekeeping, although there were certainly gatekeepers. There were a lot of misconceptions, errors, and unchecked biases on dead trees and in late 90s databases. The idea that those librarians, researchers, editors, fact-checkers were aligned with anything you might care about is also unsupported and dubious.
I distinctly remember being an 8 year old in primary school and not being believed by a teacher that tungsten existed. I was told I must be wrong about the density of this metal being higher than lead and unless I could find a book to prove it I should shut up about it. In reality I'd been to a museum and learnt all about wonderful wulfram and probably just must have been insufferable.
Wikipedia is a godsend.
FWIW, this article isn't your usual substack slop. There are some Googling tricks and techniques here that I've never seen documented elsewhere, such as AROUND(n).