Robert Darnton Quotes

When I find the right information, the Web is a blessing; when I don't, it's a distraction.

The largest issue with search is that we learned about it when the web was young, when the universe was 'complete' - the entire web was searchable! Now our digital lives are utterly fractured - in apps, in walled gardens like Facebook, across clunky interfaces like those in automobiles or Comcast cable boxes.

The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?

I'm on Twitter, I'm on HuffPo, just any website - you go down a rabbit hole. You start out on HuffPo, then you get a link to this, you get a link to that. Or an article, or a blog. One thing leads to another.

Inside all the computers of any large corporation is every decision that gets made. But people spend a huge amount of time trying to find the correct piece of information.

The power of the Internet is also its limitation - it provides access to large amounts of information without providing guidance on how to sort out what is credible and what is not.

The Internet goes doot-doot-doot - it goes sideways. There's nothing hierarchical about it. And the best thing about it is also the worst thing about it, which is there are no gatekeepers on the Internet. Consequently, there's a whole lot of bad information on the Internet. But I think that sorts itself out over time.

There's no question there's enough information available to all of us in this society for darn near anything. The problem is the quality of the information, the presentation of it... You shouldn't have to be a lawyer.

I think Facebook has a lot of work to do to make sure people are seeing meaningful things and not garbage.

The content has to be good; medium doesn't matter to me.

There are a lot of services trying to solve the information discovery problem, and no one has got it right yet.

Readers are increasingly reliant on digital sources for information - and they are increasingly reliant on these sources to be accurate.

The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable.

What magazines do is curate: we give accurate and trustworthy information. If you have a problem, it's very difficult to go to the web and get accurate information... magazines, at their best, should be an incredible voyage of discovery.

As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.

The Internet shows me how limited my interests are - there's everything out there and I'm still looking at what the weather's going to be like in Scotland.

Twitter has stopped being a place where I could learn things I didn't know, glean information that was free from errors about a breaking news story or engage in a discussion and be reasonably confident that people's criticisms were in good faith.

When I think about too much content out there, one of the things that comes to mind for me is just the volume of really outstanding creators there are.

With the Internet you can research anything.

If you want my answer about Donald Trump, you can Google it. It's everywhere. They've got this new thing called Google.

At first glance, there's a lot of sex on the Internet. Or not at first glance: nobody can find anything on the Internet at first glance.

The Internet is where we all go to for the first stop of information. It's not the library any more, it's the Internet and if I want to find out about Kate Russell, what do I do? I Google Kate Russell. Simple as that.

The search for truth in cyberspace will take you through the wormhole, and there's nothing on the other side but pedants and nitpickers and bottomless ambiguity. If you're not careful, you'll spend all your time proving everything and understanding nothing.

I think more and more people are starting to understand that you can't believe half of everything you read or what you see. There are so many information outlets that are available that it's almost too much, there is so much misinformation out there.

The Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.