Commenting before RTFA: the minimalist Hacker News reader. ;)

I like the idea of periodically taking a break from Googling or always knowing a fact. For me doing crosswords is a great exercise in this, sure you could Google the clues and know right away, but its much more satisfying wondering the answer yourself and eventually getting it by using other letters gained from different clues.

However, if this became the de facto standard way of doing things, living as our ancestors did, I feel like society would regress. The invention of the search engine was to fill a human need to organize the world's digital information in an easily retrievable format. Libraries have had card catalogs for hundreds of years: just curious, would you argue for going back to the times that pre-date those systems? Sure there might be a more random discovery of books just aimlessly walking through shelf after shelf, but what if you needed that book asap?

Hi spam bot!