I'm guessing that most libraries have one of their books on the shelf. With all the competition on the Internet, I'm surprised they still do what they do. But since they do it so well, I guess my surprise could be surprising (to you or them).
I read this yesterday, "Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order?" and it had me wondering about, well, pretty much everything. This is the part that got to me,
"The point isn't what order the alphabet is in, but that it's in order at all."
And this is what enrages me about the state of the Internet. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to organize it anymore. This would bother me when I saw that .org domains where sold to porn sites or squatters. I always thought that (dot) orgs were for non-profits, and foolishly, I continue to believe that non-profit organizations need to be charitable or poor. I think huge organizations like the NFL are non-profit (IRC, 501 (c)).
And then with the dawn of search engines, I thought I found order. But not really. Results changed from day to day, and I had to learn to save the text of pages (or whole pages) of things I wanted to keep or use later.
This has become worse now that search rankings are directly tied to ad sales. When I watch TV, I'm pretty much guaranteed a certain percentage of commercials. When we see pop-up ads spiraling around in the corner of the screen, we complain. But the Internet does this to us and we accept it. And the way ads are sold and results are displayed only reinforces my fear that the Internet will never have any real order, that we are at the mercy of the data holders.
This is why the notion that "we are the creators" makes me angry, you know, that whole Time magazine, "you are the person of the year," and they put a freakin mirror on the cover. How mystical, like the crappy end of Circle of Iron when Cord learns the secret in the book. Oooooh. Look into the pages. You must think I'm high.
The purpose of this philosophy seems only to create chaos. Again, the Internet-based economy is only as valuable as its content: corporations have real business to attend, therefore they've assigned us the task of feeding the Internet with useless crap to aid the chaos. Then they can say that only they can bring order to the madness. Isn't the the game plan of any coup or revolution?
But libraries have order, we say. Libraries are all about order.
Yes, they tell us, but your order is all wrong.
"The people will tell you how to order your information." It makes me feel like I'm watching some historical drama about Cardinal Richelieu or something else with corrupt government and underhanded bureaucracy.
So the order that I imagined has probably never really existed. And that sometimes makes me angry, like now. I once hoped that I could be part of the solution. But I am trapped in the maze of the problem. Well, at least I recycle. Don't tell me that that's a scam, too. (Damn you, Penn & Teller!)
