If that did not work, you can find the full article by going to the Trinity College library, searching for The New Yorker under "Find a Journal or Newspaper by Name," then searching for the author or title. I had to install VPN software to get access to Lexis-Nexis from my home computer. The software is available free from Trinity.
* * * * *
Going through the process of tracking down the article made me realize how pervasive Google is inside my own head. Part of its philosophy is also present in my actions during the search. After I looked at the link to the abstract that Colin provided, I used The New Yorker's own site search to see if I could find another way to get the full article without paying for it. That turned up empty, and a look at the nifty magazine viewer ran into a request for four dollars, which I refused. I seem to share Google's ethos that information should be free. As the Auletta article said, "Google has reinforced the notion that traditional media now want to combat: that digital information and content should be free and that advertising alone should subsidize it." Or maybe I am just cheap and reluctant to give my credit card info to a company I will probably have no future contact with.
My next step in the search for the article, was of course to go to Google.com. I used the company's search engine to find the author's web site. That site now includes a link to the New Yorker abstract, but not the full article.
Out of habit and experience, I then turned back to Google's search engine, and performed an advanced search of the New Yorker web site. Then I searched the whole web to see if a reliable source had reposted the article. After a couple of minutes of looking, both approaches came up empty.
Instead, I went back an older search tool available to me as a Trinity student: LexisNexis. This brought back memories of my sitting in the pre-renovation Babbidge Library at UConn as an undergrad, in 1995 or so, being amazed that I could search through articles from newspapers across the country. Ah, the good old days. Sigh.
LexisNexis is based on an older economic and media model: A user or institution (college, law firm, etc) pays for access to the company's controlled databases, and usually gets fairly reliable information from a professional source, like a newspaper magazine, or government record. The breadth of content is limited by what LexisNexis' staff creates or licenses. The Google model is more recent: The users typically pay nothing for information from the web that someone has decided to release for free, and the users must decide if a given blogger or web site can be believed. The money comes from advertising and some data collection about the users. The breadth of information users can access is wider, but the users must watch more carefully for incorrect information. Social networking sites like Facebook might create a slightly different model: The information you search for comes from "friends" who you have some previous contact with. The user again pays nothing, and the money comes from lots of personal information collected about users, and from advertising. Much of the information users would search for seems to come from the broad information source of the web, but filtered through the user's "friends." Because of that filtering, social networks would offer the narrowest source of information of the three.
Google is my first choice search engine, because a number of years ago, I tried it and it reliably offered better searches than the other engines of the day. In recent years I have not even bothered to try other search engines. Google still offers a useful way to access the broad information source of the world wide web.
* * * * *
Going through the process of tracking down the article made me realize how pervasive Google is inside my own head. Part of its philosophy is also present in my actions during the search. After I looked at the link to the abstract that Colin provided, I used The New Yorker's own site search to see if I could find another way to get the full article without paying for it. That turned up empty, and a look at the nifty magazine viewer ran into a request for four dollars, which I refused. I seem to share Google's ethos that information should be free. As the Auletta article said, "Google has reinforced the notion that traditional media now want to combat: that digital information and content should be free and that advertising alone should subsidize it." Or maybe I am just cheap and reluctant to give my credit card info to a company I will probably have no future contact with.
My next step in the search for the article, was of course to go to Google.com. I used the company's search engine to find the author's web site. That site now includes a link to the New Yorker abstract, but not the full article.
Out of habit and experience, I then turned back to Google's search engine, and performed an advanced search of the New Yorker web site. Then I searched the whole web to see if a reliable source had reposted the article. After a couple of minutes of looking, both approaches came up empty.
Instead, I went back an older search tool available to me as a Trinity student: LexisNexis. This brought back memories of my sitting in the pre-renovation Babbidge Library at UConn as an undergrad, in 1995 or so, being amazed that I could search through articles from newspapers across the country. Ah, the good old days. Sigh.
LexisNexis is based on an older economic and media model: A user or institution (college, law firm, etc) pays for access to the company's controlled databases, and usually gets fairly reliable information from a professional source, like a newspaper magazine, or government record. The breadth of content is limited by what LexisNexis' staff creates or licenses. The Google model is more recent: The users typically pay nothing for information from the web that someone has decided to release for free, and the users must decide if a given blogger or web site can be believed. The money comes from advertising and some data collection about the users. The breadth of information users can access is wider, but the users must watch more carefully for incorrect information. Social networking sites like Facebook might create a slightly different model: The information you search for comes from "friends" who you have some previous contact with. The user again pays nothing, and the money comes from lots of personal information collected about users, and from advertising. Much of the information users would search for seems to come from the broad information source of the web, but filtered through the user's "friends." Because of that filtering, social networks would offer the narrowest source of information of the three.
Google is my first choice search engine, because a number of years ago, I tried it and it reliably offered better searches than the other engines of the day. In recent years I have not even bothered to try other search engines. Google still offers a useful way to access the broad information source of the world wide web.
I think that last statement says it all; Google is still my first choice for a search engine. We don't even think about it anymore. In fact, when I use internet explorer at work (because links automatically open in that instead of Firefox on the network) and the search comes up with a bunch a garbage, I smack myself in the forehead for automatically assuming Google was the default search and quickly switch over.
ReplyDeleteThe sway of Google cannot be underestimated.
Have you used any other search engines that were helpful?
ReplyDeleteI am going to force myself to use Yahoo for searches for a while, to see how it compares.
See my post Google Video Instruction: http://toandfro798.vox.com/library/post/google-video-instruction.html
ReplyDeleteand another post in which I tried just that.
Bing seems to work fine...often just as well as Google, but as the video Microsoft Bing vs. Google points out, it doesn't always give the best results.