"We seem to live mainly in order to see how we live, and this habit brings on what might be called the externalizing of knowledge; with every new manual there is less need for its internal, visceral presence. The owner or user feels confident that he possesses its contents — there they are, in handy form on the handy shelf. And with their imminent transfer to a computer, that sense of possession will presumably attach itself to the hard disk or the phone number of the data bank. To say this is also to say that the age of ready reference is one in which knowledge inevitably declines into information. The master of so much packaged stuff has less need to grasp context or meaning than his forbears: he can always look it up. His active memory is otherwise engaged anyway, full of the arbitrary names, initials, and code figures essential to carrying on daily life. He can be vague about the rest: he can always check it out."
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Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesPeople from ParisImmigrants to the United States
Original Language: English
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"Look It Up! Check It Out!" (1986), p. 39
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun
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Jacques Barzun
Jacques Barzun (November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-born American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and classical music, and was also known as a philosopher of education.
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