These days, we are fed a stream of things on the internet based on our past searches and activity. I look up greenhouse kits once, and blam! I'm inundated with ads for greenhouse kits, and the Youtube videos that come up for me suddenly include things about greenhouse use and care. I bought a Nissan, and suddenly I'm getting ads for Nissans (as if I'm going to buy another when I've just bought one!). I watch one video on Croatian cookery, and I get spam emails for cooking pans and travel companies. Before long, all my internet "feeds" are limited to about four topics. I may think I'm accessing lots of information on the internet, but actually I'm being restricted to those limited "feeds." Sometimes I type in a really wild search, completely off topic, just to refresh my feeds a bit.
Remember the good old days when you walked into the library and were faced with banks of tiny drawers filled with index cards? They pointed you to sources of information on any topic you could imagine. (And they really satisfied my compulsion to organize things into little boxes.) Yes, Google searches can theoretically look up any information on any topic -- but the results that come up are based on popularity. What comes up one day may be different from what comes up tomorrow. On the internet you are restricted to what it wants to show you, and it keeps track of what you search. At a library, you have access to every book, all books, on whatever topic, any genre, on every shelf. It's all there for your perusal. And no one knows what you looked up unless you check the book out.
We need to protect our libraries, support them financially, support hardcopy books, and take a deep look at the idea of book banning. Libraries are the last safe haven of information. And when the EMP goes off and takes out your internet, libraries may be the only source of information.
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