The Next Best Thing to Knowing Something...

There is a saying I have always liked that goes like this: "The next best thing to knowing something, is knowing where to find it."

Somewhere along the line I read that this little gem is attributed to the great Samuel Johnson[1].

However, using a modern tool that Johnson would no doubt have approved of immensely - a Web search engine - I find that this saying is actually a rewording of something Samuel Johnson said. The original goes like this:

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."[2]

I can see why the latter was re-factored by the mists of time. It does not trip off the tongue terribly well. It lacks a certain Oscar Wildean phrasing that the former possesses in abundance.

Delicious, recursive ironies abound here. I half-knew something about "knowing" (if you see what I mean). I resorted to a search engine ("the next best thing to knowing") in order to find out more about it. In so doing, I found the original version of the saying and had to adjust my knowledge about the saying itself. Thus proving the validity of the saying. Delicious.

Web search engines are probably the most potent weapon that any practitioner following Johnson's maxim has at their disposal. In a short space of time search engines have literally changed the way we think about knowledge.

Now that is a strong statement and I had better back it up with some
evidence. I offer two examples from my own brain circa May, 2006.

Item: In conversation, it is not unusual for questions to pose themselves. Three examples from my own experience over the last few days:

- "I wonder is there a direct flight from Knock to Birmingham?"

- "Where in the world is Myanmar?"

- "Have Australia ever qualified for the Soccer World Cup?"

In all three cases I did not know the answer and - without conscious effort - I found myself formulating a Web search strategy to find the answers. In my head I worked out search terms that would get me answers quickly. You are probably doing the same right now.

Item: I use a lot of tedious, grindingly boring minutia in my daily work as an IT architect and programmer. In the earlier years of the Web I would bookmark huge amounts of stuff as I found it for future reference. In more recent times, I find myself bookmarking less and less. Why bother when the search engines are so good at finding it again? Besides, by re-executing a query every time, I will find new resources on my search terms as they become available.

A modern but rather ugly re-factoring of the older re-factoring of Johnson's saying might go like this:

"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing how to formulate a query to a web search engine to find it."

[1] http://www.samueljohnson.com/briefbio.html


[2] http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html

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