Well, we don’t know that. The prevailing assumption was that we would enter “herrliche Zeiten”, to quote Kaiser Wilhelm…”wondrous times”. The consequences of such abundance could only be good, right? Well, let’s see. An article in the July 18 issue of Science reports on research conducted by sociologist James Evans of UChi. He analyzed citation behavior and came to the conclusion that more and more citations are being made to fewer and more recent journals in a kind of convergence pattern, even though the journals may have a lot of digitized content from earlier publication years. He theorizes that this pattern may lead to rapid emergence of bogus scientific consensus, which would not occur if more publications over a longer time span were consulted. The sense that practitioners are united on a point may be an illusion, because they represent too small and too recent a segment of the total scholarly record. The inverse of that is the possibility that important, dissenting papers will be overlooked, thus adding to the impression of consensus which is not justified. Others disagree and say that user behavior is closer to the predicted style, in which scholars extend their reading both across the number of journals read and further back in time.
Science
The Economist and Nature News have interesting takes on the Evans study, suggesting that the reliance on electonic discovery and retrieval has replaced browsing through print issues to the degree that serendipitous discovery of important work doesn’t happen as easily as it did before.
Economist
Nature
It’s not really clear what’s going on, or if people are asking the right questions. Some commentators are wondering about that very thing and have views you can read here:
Evans

The trouble with being Numero Uno is that you have all these little dweebs and twerps running around who want to make a rep by taking you down. Google is ruling the search engine roost pretty much, and pushing into other areas as well. Over the years, this or that product has been launched with the intention of knocking the Big G off its pinnacle and succeeding to the top spot. Another contender has come along, perhaps to join the guys on Boot Hill, and this one has the obligatory cutesy name: Cuil, pronounced cool, or maybe coo-il. It’s a product of some ex-Googlers, who were not happy with the way things were done there and so left. Pooling their talent and resources, they came up with Cuil. One claim is that the new service is much, much bigger than Google. Another is that the company will not store any personal information about users. Yet another is the claim that Cuil results will be better than Google’s because once their machine locates a page with the supplied key words, Cuil will analyze that page thoroughly for relationships and other markers of relevance. And a final claim is that Cuil will do all this with many fewer machines than are now used on the server farms that keep Google going. Ok, let them have their shot. It’s an uphill slog, but maybe enough people are dissatisfied with Google to let the rebellion spread. The company’s pledge not to gather personal data resonates with a lot of people who think the search engines are getting too pushy and intrusive. As always, we shall see.
Cuil
PS. The home page states that Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. There is also a picture of some green looking place with a lake or pond or something, and some Stone-hengey looking rocks in the foreground. Looks like Ireland to me, but it could be Pennsylvania.

No, it’s not like Puttin’ on the Ritz. It’s just what it sounds like: the brain, inside the skull, the Head Office, cutting it. The person doing the cutting is neurosurgeon Katrina Firlik, and she writes about one high-tech aspect of her art, navigation systems, in a very lively and quite fascinating piece for Technology Review. Navigation systems are those hardware/software combinations which help neurosurgeons find their way to the target, whether that’s a tumor or an aneurysm or some other abnormality that has to come out or else. Briefly, navigation systems allow the surgeon to touch a portion of the skull and see on a screen previously recorded MRI scans of the area. Tap another place, you get another picture. It’s pretty cool and really helps guide the hand holding the instruments. But,there are some drawbacks. One, there’s another piece of gear to baby and fiddle with. Two, there’s another piece of gear to go in with all the other pieces of gear,and their various cables and connectors,so things get pretty tight. The navigator needs a clear field, so that dictates where people can stand, or rather, can’t stand. And,it all has to be sterile. Dr.Firlik walks us through an operation to remove a tumor in a previously healthy 60-ish woman. It’s done very clearly, with a minimum of jargon and absolutely no hokum or tear-jerking. You do this and then you do this for these reasons, here is what is supposed to happen and here is what can go wrong if we’re unlucky. At some point the gadgets are no longer useful. The surgeon’s on her own and has to cut. On the brain. Read it:
Brain

Dr. Firlik is also the author of a book Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: a brain surgeon exposes life on the inside, described as “witty and lucid” by the reviewer in Publisher’s Weekly. I’m all for witty and lucid. A similar book is When the Air Hits You Brain; tales of neurosurgery by Dr. Frank Vertosick. Those with really long memories will remember Crisis a movie of the 1950s, in which an American neurosurgeon (Cary Grant) on his honeymoon is kidnapped in a makey-uppey Central American country run by a Mussolini-ish dictator (Jose Ferrer),who has a guess what in his noggin. The doctor is pressured to operate on the Big Cheese right there in San Something, because the guy won’t/can’t leave the country. Everything needed is flown in, etc. It’s all rather a stretch, and Ferrer does not always resist the urge to ham, just a little , but there is a great scene in which the Dicto and his suck-up entourage insist on watching a rehearsal of the operation, only to leave hours later, thoroughly wiped out and definitely in no mood to party. Take that, you oppressors and grinders of the People!