Jane_Doe - 7:19 pm on Aug 29, 2002 (gmt 0)

That said, I do disagree with statements like "Eventually, a FAST-type engine should be administered by a consortium of librarians who are protected civil servants of a world government. Anybody have thoughts on the Salon article?

I would hate to see a master, government sponsored search engine. My experience with Google has been the opposite of Everymans. I have a site on alternative health topics that does well in Google because of the growing interest in holisitic health in the U.S., so the site gets lots of links and ranks well. If I had to go through some government employee to get my site listed in a search engine, I doubt I'd ever get listed at all because my ideas go against the grain of the conventional medical establishment and are contrary to the advice on government health sites.

Dr. Roger J. Williams wrote that when science becomes orthodoxy, it ceases to be science. If web sites were approved or dispproved by government employees, all we'd ever be exposed to on a given subject would be government othodoxy.

Having said that, I respect Everyman for his opinions and actions, even if I don't personally agree with all of them. It's pretty cool the way he got the CIA to change their web site. We need watchdogs like Everyman to make up for the politically complacent slugs like me in the world and to counterbalance the anti-privacy actions of some areas of the government.