Google’s Search Box Changed the Meaning of Information | WIRED
“A theory of technology that places every informational product on a spectrum from Physician to Librarian:
The Physician’s primary aim is to protect you from context. In diagnosing or treating you, they draw on years of training, research, and personal experience, but rather than presenting that information to you in its raw form, they condense and synthesize. This is for good reason: When you go to a doctor’s office, your primary aim is not to have your curiosity sparked or to dive into primary sources; you want answers, in the form of diagnosis or treatment. The Physician saves you time and shelters you from information that might be misconstrued or unnecessarily anxiety-provoking.
In contrast, the Librarian’s primary aim is to point you toward context. In answering your questions, they draw on years of training, research, and personal experience, and they use that to pull you into a conversation with a knowledge system, and with the humans behind that knowledge system. The Librarian may save you time in the short term by getting you to a destination more quickly. But in the long term, their hope is that the destination will reveal itself to be a portal. They find thought enriching, rather than laborious, and understand their expertise to be in wayfinding rather than solutions. Sometimes, you ask a Librarian a question, and they point you to a book that is an answer to a question you didn’t even think to ask. Sometimes, you walk over to the stacks to retrieve the book, only for a different book to catch your eye instead. This too is success to the Librarian.”
https://www.wired.com/story/google-answer-box-information-search/#:~:text=I%20HAVE-,A,catch%20your%20eye%20instead.%20This%20too%20is%20success%20to%20the%20Librarian.,-There%20are%20book