That's a good point, though. Very few questions are really "factual."
Take capital cities. Surely that's a factual question, right?
*What's the capital of France? Paris. Easy. We all agree.
*What's the capital of South Africa? Google says Pretoria. But in fact
South Africa has three capital cities—one each for the three branches
of government. Pretoria often gets top billing as the executive is
there.
*What was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire? Google says "Ecbatana,
Pasargadae, Persepolis, Susa" which are all kinda right and all kinda
wrong. There's no evidence the Persians thought in those terms. It's
probable that the seat of government was wherever the Shah was.
One of the great things about Google normally doesn't *answer* your
questions, but gets you into documents that do, while offering the
opportunity to contextualize and complicate them. An electronic
almanac focused on giving you "answers" is likely to give you
reductive ones.
Tim
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Jason Etheridge <jason_at_esilibrary.com> wrote:
>> It's not just that "how tall is the Eiffel Tower?" actually gives you the
>> answer "Eiffel Tower — Height: 1986 feet/300 Meters" but, if it
>> didn't, the first ten results also include it.
>
> Apparently, there are different answers in the first 10 results. :)
> The 1986 feet must be including the antenna.
>
> --
> Jason Etheridge
> | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
> | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
> | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> | email: jason_at_esilibrary.com
> | web: http://www.esilibrary.com
>
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Received on Mon May 04 2009 - 11:29:07 EDT