The paradox of the web is that one must write the thing for which you search. I am repeatedly confronted with this in my work, and it is part of why I blog technical information: I know I will want to search for it later. And, in knowing that I will want to search for it, I know that it is being sought by others. Another way of saying this is that the web is what we write.
I was reminded of this today while speaking with a student that is working on an interesting project related to Firefox. He was feeling somewhat frustrated about the lack of content on the web related to his work. After a 30 minute discussion on irc, in which he met two Mozilla developers who took him through a large part of the solution to his problem, he felt content to move forward. So I asked him, “are you going to blog what you just learned?” His response was less than I’d hoped for: “I’ll have to see if I’m allowed to do that.” I’m not sure I ever fully succeed in showing him that the only way information gets onto the web is if someone writes it. The fact that there is no one writing what you need, yet there are people telling you what you want to know, that’s enough to close the loop. The only step left is to transcribe what you learned.
When you do a search, and it comes back with no results, it’s a sign that you need to write something.
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I have often contemplated this irony: searching for the answer for something means that you know there is something you do not know… I still wonder in what ways the Internet will provide and develop channels of genuine discovery, through which we not only encounter that which we know we don’t know, but also discover that which we do not know we are even ignorant of. And, if such a framework exists, how does it become more contextualized to life than just a random trivia game?
I think the web does this in a couple of ways. I had an experience of it last night, actually. I’m going to be writing something about sleep in a bit, and was doing some research online. I wanted to find the name of the figure in antiquity who was told he had only 10 years to live, so decided to forgo sleep and stay away day and night. As a result of doing this, he died exactly when it was predicted he would by the Oracle. I can’t figure out how to search for that no matter what I try. But, while I was searching, I discovered that Aristotle wrote “On Sleep and Sleeplesness,” which was the most amazing find. I ended up reading that last night instead.
Search, like browsing the library, is only one way to find information, and it is heavily biased to ‘finding.’ What we need to think about are all the other, more passive ways I learn things. When I see you blogging something, read you on twitter, etc. I’m not looking to ‘find’ information, I’m looking to find you. In finding you, I learn in ways that search cannot accomplish.
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[...] by GPHemsley on February 8, 2010 As Dave Humphrey once taught me: When you do a search, and it comes back with no results, it’s a sign that you need to write [...]