Seriously. As a young scamp of 21, I find it hard to believe that anyone got anything done in any reasonable amount of time before the existence of the internet. What did people do to obtain obscure information? The only things I can think of are 1) wade through a bunch of books at the library, *praying* that one contained the tiny piece of knowledge that you needed, or 2) to find an expert in that subject. Jeez that must have sucked.
Just as an example, say I wanted to know why some people have two differ
They went to a University library and obtained help from a trained librarian. If the information was *really* obscure, then they would actually hire a trained librarian experienced in information retrieval.
One would think that the Internet would rid us of the need for professional/degreed librarians, but no so! Your average person does not have the skills necessary to dig up the true depth and breadth of information available on the internet. Librarians, O
This [blogspot.com] was #5 in the first google search I tried. (Your turn guessing my search terms:) It both mentions and disputes your candidate (Erasmus).
Simply putting the phrase "last man to know everything" (in quotes) into Google's search puts that blog on page 2. It would be relatively futile to guess what else you may have used to narrow it further.
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Just as an example, say I wanted to know why some people have two differ
Re:wow.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They went to a University library and obtained help from a trained librarian. If the information was *really* obscure, then they would actually hire a trained librarian experienced in information retrieval.
One would think that the Internet would rid us of the need for professional/degreed librarians, but no so! Your average person does not have the skills necessary to dig up the true depth and breadth of information available on the internet. Librarians, O
Re:wow.. (Score:1)
Are you saying we have not already experienced "information overload"?
The last man who was commonly accepted by many scholars as probably the last to know "everything" the known world had to offer died in the 1500s.
Ever since then, we've all be specialists.
(Would-be librarians: Have fun googling for his name. Hint: Not DaVinci, Goethe, or Veblen, and certainly not John St
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Re:wow.. (Score:1)