A question for you all
I’ve been doing some Kurzweil-inspired thinking lately and I have a question for you all:
What percentage of the knowledge in your brain can be found on the Web? In other words, let’s say you were able to express all the knowledge in your brain as statements of fact. What percentage of those statements would you be able to find on the Web?
Follow up question:
Think about that percent of knowledge that cannot be found on the Web. What kind of knowledge is it? What does it pertain to?
I have my own set of answers to these questions which I will be sharing in an upcoming mini-essay I’m writing, but I was hoping that some of you might post a comment with your own answers to these questions.
Thanks for your help!
I would have to say that all of my “technical” knowledge can be found on the web. What I mean by “technical” is by hard facts and such, other than facts about my personal life.
However, what is not on the web is my “thinking” knowledge. E.g. there are tons of web sites out there that talk about programming (my area of expertise). However, does it mean that whatever I can do, any common Joe can do (e.g. create a software product) by simply searching on the web? I don’t think so. If is was that simple, then wouldn’t it be straight forward for someone to create a program that will create other software product?
stooker
8 Jan 06 at 7:29 pm
Bad analogy time! I think Google is like the calculator – people tell you you shouldn’t get too reliant since you might not always have access to it. But the fact is that you always do (through your mobile phone in both cases). I think this is a good thing: Google lets you forget about trivia (you can always Google it later) and free up your brainspace for “higher level” tasks.
Pete Cashmore
10 Jan 06 at 2:16 pm