Today, during a trip to the store my cashier gave me a flier for flu shots. “Flu shots?” I asked. “At Wal-Mart?” The girl responded, “yes” that Wal-Mart was indeed selling them and that the reason they were advertising so early was because the country ran out last year. On the way to the car I heard my roommate grumble to herself.

“She was wrong.” Sarah muttered. “I should have corrected her. The country didn’t run out last year. Wal-Mart ran out, and the country rationed them for ‘at-risk’ groups.” To clarify, Sarah just got her M.A. in Public Health. She’s about to move to Boston for her Ph.D.

I run into this situation quite a bit: one where someone says something wrong, misguided, or outright false. Where, they don’t bother to check if they are right or not before they speak. The librarian in me is losing hair over this.

Well, maybe that’s not really why, but I’m reminded of a quote from the Confucian Analects – “A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak but quick to act.” The idea here isn’t only that someone should focus on action (Confucius especially valued learning), but that it’s important to make sure you are right before speaking.

It’s an idea that extends well beyond ancient China.

Unfortunately, I’m pessimistic about the ability for most people to develop this trait. It’s all too rare. Naturally, humans have a sort of “bounded rationality,” a problem solving mindset that hones in on answers through fits and starts. The problem is, so long as this is our default behavior, people will always be quick to speak. In any sort of self-governing society this is a bad – or at least an inefficient – thing.

I’ve made the case before that technology doesn’t resolve the problems related to our tenancy toward intellectual laziness.

The idea, of course, that I’ve sought to counter is that the Internet has created a vast democratizing network which gives  a voice to everyone. I’ve opined, “so what?” I have a voice. Does anyone read my blog? Not really. So, does it matter if I have a voice or not when everyone else does? The right and wrong alike? Frank Rich in an op-ed column in the New York Times cuts to the heart of this. He points to ghost written Twitter accounts, an explosion in web-based falsehoods (i.e. that President Obama is a Muslim), and astro-turf political sites that mislead people about popular opinions.

Without touching on how this happens, Rich notes that dishonesty, carefully crafted communication, and our behavioral tendencies all undermine the web’s potential. In short, the things that have made democracy tough to manage before (lies, money, tendencies to not fact-check, and a misinformed electorate) exist today today. Moreover, these problems haven‘t been eliminated by the Internet and it’s ability to provide easily accessible information.

All that the web has done is supercharge who we are – flawed people.

Improving the quality of public information is important. But, it can’t be achieved by simply making more of it accessible. The problem is us. It’s our inability to separate the truth from the lies. It’s our intellectual laziness. It’s our dishonesty. It’s our desire to get what we want and sell our personal beliefs.

So long as technology fails to address the limitations we have, it will always be limited by them. And, this is why an old-school librarian approach still matters.

Yesterday, Google rolled out it’s latest in a string of improvements to their search functionality. Google Instant’s, “most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” [It...] helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback.” At first I was impressed. Then, I realized this is nothing new.

To balance out the “feelings of euphoria and weightlessness,” here are some reasons why users should to come back to Earth:

All-in-all, I’m pleased with the changes they’ve made. Given some of the hype out there, though, these points sum up exactly what Google Instant is: a nice tweak. We aren’t seeing anything new, it’s not special, and it certainly isn’t a fundamental breakthrough.

Bricks in the Wall: 5.75/10.

Did you hear? The web is dead.

For their September issue, Wired magazine wrote a great piece on the changing dynamics of web traffic. As it turns out, the web really isn’t going away, but Internet use has been shifting from browsers (i.e. Firefox, Internet Explorer) to mobile and specialized applications. This observation is an interesting one, because if it holds true then vendors might be able to monetize content again.

I’m not holding my breath. Still, it could present an opportunity for libraries. Here’s why.

Until recently, net usage implied a web-browser and some sort of computer. Web-applications were sometimes involved, but the common denominator was that everyone used a web-browser for delivery.  Data usually went through this common interface.

Enter mobile computing and a host of special programs.

I-Phones, Blackberrys and other comparable devices are more portable than laptop computers. The catch is they don’t work well for web browsing. To counter this, developers started creating specialized programs for them called “apps.” Moreover, other programs like Skype have taken off over the past few years without relying on the web. They just use the Internet instead of web-pages.

All of this highlights the trend that Wired spoke of earlier – a marketplace moving to local applications which don’t freely share data. And, it gets to the crux of my statement about monetizing content.

If information isn’t shared then it can be controlled.

If information can be controlled then the web will, obviously, become less open.

If the web is less open then that will make libraries more important.

Originally, libraries were formed to serve as single, centralized cost-saving repositories of information. Back in the early 1990′s the web started started supplementing (or supplanting) that role. If it turns out that resources stop being posted to the web in a free and accessible way… the beast will starve. Or at least become a lot weaker. Given this, it seems very feasible that Libraries could work with publishers to fit themselves into a new Internet.

I’m not sure all of this will happen, but I can see that media producers would prefer that Libraries make information available rather than the alternative. When something is posted via a web page that makes it hard to charge for.

Last October I singled out Gary Nodler (R-Sen.) from Joplin, because he helped to block the use of laptops by Missouri State Senators. At the time I said I wouldn’t vote for him if he ever runs for a statewide office.  Turns out he is. He’s looking to take Roy Blunt’s U.S. Representative seat in southwest Missouri where I grew up.

My, how the tables turn!

This reminds me of why Internet access (and digital libraries) need to be accessible to lawmakers. And, with information becoming ambiently findable, why they need to be able to fact check one another in real time. The Annenburg Public Policy Center seems to understand this. They host FactCheck.org. So does the St. Petersburg Times which produces the Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFact website. Unfortunately, not all of Missouri’s Senators do. Traditional media can’t move at the speed of assertion.

I may have been too hard on Sen. Nodler, especially after I found this site, but given any viewing of “Countdown with Keith Olberman” or “The O’Riley Factor” it’s obvious that political fact checking has it’s own bizarre standard. Interestingly, the media has become segmented in recent years which has allowed political hacks to justify almost anything.

This is a common problem. The internet, radio, and television are all  littered with falsehoods and half-truths, partially because anyone can slap an something together capable of reaching a wide audience. If properly approached, though, this problem can be resolved.

Basically, my argument is this. Given access to quality, agreed upon information sources, and perhaps a revised legislative process, politicians can improve the quality of discourse as debate occurs. If provided the opportunity to call one another out using evidence (the moment something is wrongly asserted), politicians then could, hopefully, improve their bottom line.

Of course they need to have access to the necessary information first, and they need to agree where to get it. The Daily Kos and the Drudge Report obviously should be ruled out.

A few weeks back I did a “Lunch n’ Learn” presentation for MoDOT staff on basic internet searching. I’m still not sure how useful it was (the presentation was very high-level), but I’m posting it here anyway. Lift, borrow, or plagiarize to your heart’s content.