Retorts

Sturgeon's Law

So, a "respected academic" maintains the Internet will "only serve to hugely expand the amount of junk noise at the expense of 'real' information" (GIGO, April). Will it do so to a greater extent than television? Than moving pictures? Than the printing press?

Of course the Internet will be responsible for far more nonsense than sense. Every other communications technology before it has been too. As science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon said in response to the charge that 90% of SF is crap, "Ninety percent of everything is crap". Smart people will make use of the Net to find those nuggets of useful data, just as they find worthwhile texts amongst the mass of New Age bullshit on the shelves.

And there are indeed many useful nuggets on the Internet. For every crank, kook or criminal spewing nonsense, there's someone who's produced a resource that's at least somewhat useful. You've got to know how to find and evaluate them, of course, but that's true in a library as well.

P. Dalton, Christchurch