How bad is your googling habit and what does it mean?

After the war was over America's attention shifted to its youth and its pop culture, attempting to grapple with problems like polio and juvenile deliquency. The youth had become progressively more troublesome while their fathers were away at war. In a surprisingly sudden way the cultures of minorities were being adopted by school children. When pegged pants hit Toledo it was a big deal, and it was taken by GIs everywhere as a sign of serious trouble. Even though zoot suits had been around for while, the Zoot Suit Riots of LA during the war marked a shift in the direction toward youth rebellion. At least that's how I experienced it. My GI father thought pegged pants meant anarchy. And this was a relatively tame opinion compared to what he thought about Chuch Berry, Little Richard, and the Beatniks.”HM

I don't know. I never googled in bluescat48.

We need something better than humans to interpret history. We're all too bias to report anything accurately. This is where Google comes in. Lord Google will work with Lords Wiki and Yahoo to remove human bias cybernetically, something like a digitally remastered recording of Billie Holiday.”HM

My work (antique dealer) would be much more difficult without Google. From images of early Nippon or Bohemian ceramic marks to recent gallery sales by known or outsider artists, nearly everything I need to know can be found via Google. I've developed an encyclopedic booklist tree to put frequently used sites close at hand. Image searches are incredibly useful in antique identification.In addition, I Google often during the day to satisfy some curiosity, find a car route, screen satellite images for abandoned structure sites in our New England area (yes, sometimes antique dealers get to play archaeologist), follow particular news stories, refresh my memory of a recipe, etc.I think Google has done a tremendous job. I like their aggressive approach to scanning and indexing libraries onto the web. Their efforts have critics, but they have certainly push other organizations to follow suit. "Knowledge wants to be free," and Google wants to give it to us free: I appreciate that. Putting entire academic and public libraries online could energize both research and its practical applications.The time from published, peer-reviewed paper to published critiques and reports of attempted replication has already gotten shorter, and public access to emerging science richer. Science education definitely needs improvement, but that's a separate issue: there is no excuse for lacking some impression of the published record on any given scientific question of concern: Google, mostly, did thatGoogle is definitely a better librarian. Google is good for the pursuit of knowledge, and I suppose an informed world is "better" for humanity. Like previous advances in the compilation and distrution of information, Google Life creates a power of influence with potential for abuse; however, the decentralized nature of Web input lets a thousand critics contend with every assertion.So I'd say Google is more than just a better librarian, even accouting for the Acquisition Librarian there, who is obsessed--to our gain. For me, Google is an invaluable resource for both work and play: for the world, Google radically promotes the distribution of knowledge.Google rocks.

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I'm still very confused over some of your connections. The "Beatniks" were mostly imagined creations of the late 50s to early 60s, based very loosely on the writings of Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and a few others, the Zoot Suit riots were simply a conflict between military on leave and the guys dating the girls and happened in 1942, Chuck Berry and Little Richard were musicians that rose to general popularity in the mid-fifties.The fact that your dad saw that as "anarchy" is at most, humorous, but that's about it.As for the overall effect of the riot, the causes, I think a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt summed it up: Far from being an example of juvenile delinquency, it was more a case of racial tensions and "The Power and Organization" of the military. On almost no notice the military self-organized into a "Gang" and there was a classic Rumble.I'm not at all sure that I would call either Chuck Berry (did you ever actually see Chuck?) or Little Richard as any greater threat than other such influences such as Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Cozy Cole, Gene Krupa, Frank Sinatra and others when they introduced "Swing" which was also seen as degenerate.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The internet really just allows personal biases to spread.For that matter, and information media.Without the internet, where would conservopedia exist?There is also a distinction between what happened in history and what caused events to happen. The facts are hardly ever in disupte--such as when the Civil War was, who faught it, where the battles took place, etc. The points of contention are what caused the war, whether a the loss of a battle undermined any side's effort (or strenghtened), etc.
This is where you are getting stuck. It is fact that there was a Zoot Suit Riot in 1942 in LA. But did it cause juvenile delinquency? Is it a starting point or culmination, or just somewhere in the progression? Is it utterly irrelevant? Or is there something important to be gleaned from it? What does it tell us about the specific society it occurred in? You are no closer to this side of history than anyone else, and perhaps further away from it than others.

Try it. You're in the great reservoir of googleability.”HM

Yes, and more. What does it mean when something becomes so all powerful?”HM

How is Google all powerful?How is it any different from other communication revolutions such as the priniting press or translations into the vernacular?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Here's my take on it.The late 40s and early 50s were about youth taking a keener interest in their self identity. The breakthrough was pegged pants and zooty styles adopted for youth clothes and mannerisms around 1950. Revolting! Prosperity and mobility were on the rise. Gradually, more teens had cars. R&B was on the radio. And pretty soon your parents caught you singing “Annie, please don’t cheat. Give me all my meat” in the shower and your weekend privileges were revoked. That sort of thing happened in the early 50s, before rock ”n’ roll came along. We didn't want Sinatra. What was wrong with us? Then came Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene.” He was the real king of rock ”n’ roll, not Elvis. Add to that Little Richard, who was no Pat Boone: “Good golly Miss Molly, you sure like to ball.” To my parents that was much worse than pegged pants, but pegged pants was where it started. So now it's the mid-50s, when the Bohemians gathered in Greenwich Village conspicuously enough to be called the Beat Generation. Jazz, you know, daddeo. They became Beatniks later because of Sputnik, in 1957, scared America half shitless and we needed to blame the Beats for being communists to make us feel better.If we had done what our GI parents wanted us to do, we would have been good little American boys and girls right on through the 1950s and there would have been no need for the hippies in 60s. America could have fought is little war in Vietnam to a splendid conclusion. Nixon would never have gotten into trouble and Spiro Agnew would have been the next great American president...if it hadn't been for those Zoot Suit Riots of the early 1940s.There it is in a nutshell.”HM

I'll refer you to Omnivorous' post in Message 49. It's not different in any way except in magnitude of information-gathering powers. Do you think there could be something more powerful than Google in that regard?”HM

lol. We lost Vietnam because of a riot in 1942? You're incredible.
Please tell me, did the punk movement of the 1970s contribute to our loss in Iraq?You've managed to string along a bunch of events. You haven't really explained a single thing--just made a bunch of assertions. History may not be as rigorous as science, but you still can't make assertions.

Please remember that you are talking with someone who lived those times.My parents had no problems with Chuck Berry or Little Richard, but then they had also introduced me to Big Momma Thorton, Bessie Smith, Lady Day, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Willie Dixon and Jelly Roll Morton.I'm sorry but I lived through the same period and saw nothing like what you seem to picture.The Beatniks were not communists, America was not threatened by anything except itself and its own conservatism. Sputnik did not lead to the Beat Generation, it was History by the time Kerouac's books came out. What was happening with youth was reflected in two of the GREAT all time TV shows, Tomight with Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

How is it any different? Ofcourse. TBL's creation by intent is far bigger. Google is nothing but one tool in the pervasive and soon to be ubiquitous thing called the internat. Google actually is nothing more than a card catalogue, a listing service, and does not yet hold information of its own. However that will change as the net itself becomes aware.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

How can Google be all powerful? It offers access to multiple dissenting views on almost every question, so what Google self-interest could be considered malignant?

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Real things always push back.
-William James Save lives! Click here!
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC!
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