

Nothing much happened - elehack
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/nothing_much_ha.php

======
ynniv
I had this conversation at work last week. Google makes trivial data trivial
to find, and yet mildly less trivial questions like "what is a good
introductory textbook on typography" result in pages chock full of useless
link spam. You struggle to find mention of anything predating 1998, before
which a few useful things happened... even by Hal Varian standards.

~~~
exit
i'm drawing a blank on how to find introductory textbook recommendations
faster than google.

i just googled "typography introductory textbook" and found at list one list
of 15.

of those the earliest publishing date was 1999, but if something worthwhile
happened in the field of typography before then i suspect it will be reposted
in newer books. plus reference to any recent issues in typography.

~~~
ynniv
_i just googled "typography introductory textbook" and found at list one list
of 15._

Are any of those good? Which of them is best? And most interestingly, what
list are you looking at, as my Google results are a decent looking Amazon
link, an empty Amazon link, a "Personality Quiz", a blog post with a few
books, _this comment on Hacker News_ , something on economics, something on
typography on the web, et cetera.

Given the results, you could guess that the first link on Amazon might be
okay, but this is garbage compared to actual research. At least the random
blog post mentions a couple of options, but who is this person, and why is
there only one such blog post? This is a really old subject, with lots of
material - hiding somewhere.

More importantly, with Google we play keyword bingo. Your search of
"typography introductory textbook" returns more authentic results than
"typography textbook", which returns publisher links and promotional pages
almost exclusively.

------
a5seo
tl;dr search engines reframe the types of questions we ask.

And prior to the Internet, the physical limits of information didn't equally
determine the types of questions we asked?

------
kiba
_but they seem blind to class-related phenomena such as the rapidly growing
divide in wealth_

It's still true there's have-now and have-laters. This is especially prevalent
in technologies. Your smartphone will someday become common in third world
countries.

~~~
dotcoma
but, in spite of that, all evidence seems to suggest that the divide between
rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger.

~~~
chc
This might be of interest to you: <http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html>

~~~
dotcoma
To a point, I agree with PG. It's perfectly ok with me to have superstars
getting paid like, well, superstars. I certainly do not want everybody to be
equally rich, or, much more likely, equally poor (let's call this "equality of
arrival"). But I would like a more equal society at the starting line
("equality at the start"), and not only for reasons of justice, but because a
system of haves and have-nots that in fact makes it much harder for the sons
and daughters of the latter to make it is also depriving society of people who
could make a contribution, and sometimes never get the chance to. As a result,
society will end up being poorer. I do not at all think it is by chance, as a
counter argument, that countries and societies where women, who make up 50% of
the population, are on a more equal standing with men - think Scandinavia, or
Holland, or Germany - are also among the richest, not to mention happiest and
most peaceful, in the world.

