I think this is an example of where books are powerful. A (good) book on a subject is far superior than pages of different articles that anyone could write. With a book you know that time and effort has gone into it. If you want to learn about something, invest in the right book.

So how do you find "the right book" these days?

Spend a few dozen hours finding and vetting "best" lists, deeply evaluating their quality. Read Web forums. Construct spreadsheets with meta-rankings derived from the lists and posts you've found. Form strong opinions about the correct ranking of the books. Argue on Web forums about the books. Post your own best list. Argue about it with people who are clearly idiots if they can't see your list is correct.

... uh, what was I doing again?

I've found one good tactic to be the 'reading lists' that some of the arts/science subreddits have in their wikis/sidebars. It's a good way to find solid entry points to a given topic that are at least respected by a good number of people who know what they're talking about.

Examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/booklist

I'm guessing you want me to say Google. But I'd actually use Amazon. Or even just walking into a good book store and reading a few! What have you got to lose?

I was thinking that when buying books, people often take notice of recommendations from Amazon or random sites through Google or discussion sites like this one, but a recommendation from someone I know or interact with is preferable when I can get it. And it's not necessarily preferable because of a higher quality recommendation: a recommendation from a person implies some degree of meaningful interaction with them that contributes to an overall sense of.. meaningful-ness even if the book turns out to be awful. Plus if it turns out to be awful, I can discuss it with that person further and possibly get a better recommendation. Plus whether or not it's awful, I can talk with them about it after reading it for additional meaningful interaction.

I think that kind of loss of meaningful interaction is a pretty small thing, but it can add up over time and have a greater impact with high usage of services like Google that automate things that previously generally involved more human interaction. And sure, no one's forcing anyone to use Google or Amazon instead of talking to people, but it's a fairly subtle opportunity cost that comes with using those services. And those kinds of services are convenient and useful enough that it's quite easy to make a habit of using them, and habits aren't easy to change.

Well, pre-internet, my city had three bookstores. None of the people working there read anything besides the popular trash; they couldn't tell you who wrote The Metamorphosis without looking it up. The store selection was based on catalogue recommendations by the publishers.

I think many easily turned to the web for recommendations because as wholesome these kind & knowledgeable book and movie human recommenders are, they simply weren't available to a lot of us.

> But I'd actually use Amazon.

Amazon book recommendations and keyword search are garbage. Sometimes even a direct search for title and author name will put the result halfway down the list. The two good things Amazon has going for it are the huge catalog (great for finding the right ISBN), and reviews dating back to the 1990s. Makes it easier to decide whether or not to purchase the book from a more ethical retailer.

Out of all the online bookstores, Thriftbooks has the best recommendations in my experience.

The best ways to find good books are still bibliographies and large public and university libraries - browse the shelves, ask the librarians. Online library catalogues usually beat online retailer catalogs for keyword searches.

Seems like you're stuck in the first step. The second is to realize none of that tech really fits your needs exactly, and to take advantage of that wealth of information to build something that does.

That sounds like a big quality of life improvement to me, not a disadvantage. Search engines make it much easier to know where to begin with things - including non-tech things.

So life was better before google—when there was still the risk of wasting time and money, and only limited means of research?

And people around you had relevance. Your librarian was relevant as a gatekeeper of information. Now we are isolated and even if we do get the best information, we are somehow not satisfied. People are becoming dumber as information is becoming more available, a paradox.

Meanwhile, we are centralizing these institutions and therefore power brokers are being more disparate from the powerless, using the technologies that were supposed to give voices to the masses. Now the masses can enforce you to only speak in lock step with them.

Vonnegut wrote about how various technologies have removed the community value of moderate talents by enabling the best of the best to reach everyone with ease, all the time, any time. Being an OK musician, for instance, has gone from having pretty good social value and maybe even non-negligible economic value, to very little.

That effect has broadened to new areas and increased in degree, with the rise of ubiquitous mobile Internet.

It was probably better because at least you were doing the best you could with what you had. There was much self discovery just by living your life.

Also the constant comparison... and constant advertisements convincing you how you should be. We used to be able to just live and commercials were contained in commercial breaks and billboards. Now the content we consume is mixed with commercials in imperceptable manners.

> Now the content we consume is mixed with commercials in imperceptable manners.

Product placement goes back to the 19th century. Remember the candy brand in E.T.? It was chosen because the company paid $1M to get them eaten by the short green man. Then there was payola, wherein the music you heard was actually a commercial paid by the record company.