There is much to love about the Internet. But there is much, as well, to dislike — and/or to be annoyed by, and/or to resent, and/or to mistrust. In late June, the Q&A community Mancx decided to put numbers to those Internet-borne vexations. The firm conducted a survey of 1,900 American adults — adults who self-identified, it’s worth noting, as people who specifically search for information on the Internet. A group full of shoppers and cat-picture-seekers might have yielded different results.
Per Mancx’s numbers, however, the Internet as an information source leaves a lot to be desired. A whopping 98 percent of respondents don’t fully trust the information available on it. Which is a good thing, overall — skepticism! — except that 94 percent of respondents also noted the many negative effects that the Internet’s bad intel can have.
On July 26th, Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo will begin constructing an enourmous book maze in the Clore Ballroom at London’s Southbank Centre. The maze, which will cover more than 5,000 square feet, will be made from a whopping 250,000 books and its walls will be 13 feet tall.
(The Central Library in Cape Town, built inside an old drill hall. Photo via.)
Flavorwire went on the hunt for libraries that were born from unused and abandoned structures, from the large (drill halls and supermarkets) to the small (phone booths and shipping containers).
Click through to check out a few libraries that rose from the ashes of other structures,
Latest Library-related report from Pew says that 12% of readers of e-books borrowed an e-book from the library in the past year. But a majority of Americans do not know that this service is provided by their local library.
Big Data: Experts say new forms of information analysis will help people be more nimble and adaptive, but worry over humans’ capacity to understand and use these new tools well.
Tech experts believe the vast quantities of data that humans and machines will be creating by the year 2020 could enhance productivity, improve organizational transparency, and expand the frontier of the “knowable future.†But they worry about “humanity’s dashboard†being in government and corporate hands and they are anxious about people’s ability to analyze it wisely.