estjohn - 7:58 pm on Sep 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

Everyman, in the last post and previous posts you state a few items almost all people would agree with. Then you leap to making several quotes revealing a very bizarre, wrong-headed ideological root to your arguments.

Some of what you say is agreeable, such as a need for ethics in business, including Google. I doubt anyody disagrees with that...it's a bit of a red herring. Also, I think most people would agree they should be socially conscious, after all, that's good business, be considerate of the community you are doing business in (although I'm not sure that should be legislated).

Based on that, you then leap to this:

"Eventually, a FAST-type engine should be administered by a consortium of librarians who are protected civil servants of a world government. Or at least they ought to belong to the American Library Association, or something similar." April 13, Everyman, Webmasterworld

Given agreement on the assumptions of ethics in business, I don't see why this necessitates a search engine being under world government or a librarian association. Maybe you can clear that up.

I doubt your "social insensitivity of nerds" theory could be backed up with any data. However, I strongly disagree from an anecdotal standpoint. Most geeks (nerds as you call them) I know are actually very socially aware and conscious, more so than your average citizen. You are pepetuating a very ignorant, non-socially-conscious stereotype to say that geeks are not social and only care about their math or programming problems.

They are often more scientific and logic-minded in their approach but I don't think that precludes being ethical or socially conscious, do you?