New Yorker Article

My daughter, Mary, sent me a link for an article that appeared in the New Yorker.  I want to share it with all of the world!  But I want to share it particularly with the genealogy world!  You can read it for yourself at:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

The article is by Jill Lepore.  I own three of her books.  More information about the author can be found at:  http://scholar.harvard.edu/jlepore/home

The article is a great argument for continuing to write those books that sit on library shelves.  For those of us who mainly blog, I am rethinking what I should spending my time on.  One quote:

The footnote, a landmark in the history of civilization, took centuries to invent and to spread. It has taken mere years nearly to destroy. A footnote used to say, “Here is how I know this and where I found it.” A footnote that’s a link says, “Here is what I used to know and where I once found it, but chances are it’s not there anymore.” It doesn’t matter whether footnotes are your stock-in-trade. Everybody’s in a pinch. Citing a Web page as the source for something you know—using a URL as evidence—is ubiquitous. Many people find themselves doing it three or four times before breakfast and five times more before lunch. What happens when your evidence vanishes by dinnertime?

However, later in the article there is information about the permalink which is a solution to this problem.  Well at least there are people working on this.

But the quote that captured my attention is:

Vine Cerf was quoted:  " I worry that the twenty-first century will become an informational black hole"

Read this article for yourself!  I have just made a few notes to remind myself of what I have read!  The article will open your eyes!