Gavin says:

“So the mistake of the Google age is…not looking at why a piece of information is available?”

I read this article several times and got kind of frustrated that I couldn’t seem to pick out the point.

Two things the world really needs is writers who have the guts to admit they screwed up and readers to say they just don’t GET it.

Most of the old writers who make total goofs of themselves are crippled by readers who think that if they do not understand The Master, it is because of a lack in them.

Often I know I’m saying something important but I haven’t gotten it straightened out in my mind.

So I thought about the basic point here again.

How’s this?

In the Chained Book Age , when books were so few they were chained and guarded, someone who could read Greek and Latin and had access to the chained books and had actually READ them, was King.

In the University Age, professors used this old superstition about Classic Authorities as a front, telling each other, as they had since the Chained Book Age, that the public should be ordered around by the Intellectuals. Those who did not agree with Father Mommy Professor just Didn’t Understand and should leave the world to their betters.

Now we are at an opposite pole in ONE sense: We have information by the ton dumped into our laps.

But the basic problem is the same one we had in the Chained Book Age: Is it all true? How much of it is embarrassing tommyrot?

If there is tommyrot, why would anyone PRODUCE that tommyrot?

The world has changed greatly since I wrote about this problem in my first book in 1976. Back then, the idea that the National Education Association had a vested interest in big government that was as blatant as big business’s financial and power interests was entirely new.

Those who live off of government want big government. That was wildly radical in 1976, and many conservatives who thought of themselves as the PROPER Ruling Elite resented it as much as leftists did.

Try Googling any subject and you will get nothing unless you understand why what comes up under your subject is there. There are ads. We know why they are there. There is Political Correctness, you know why that is there, and it is not just because it is The Truth.

But most people think it IS the truth. To really understand Internet information, you must understand why it is THERE, why it is PRODUCED. You understand instantly why you get so many ads, but you don’t go into the SUBTEXT, you don’t do the Mantra Thinking, which is taking the obvious and applying it to its full depth.

All information is produced for a reason. If you don’t think about that reason, you cannot analyze the data.

All this makes the subject much clearer to ME, and I wouldn’t have done it if Gavin hadn’t just flat said, “This is not clear.”