My reference case is computer science which went online earlier than many other domains,
You sound partly aware of this, but I think your reference case is likely to be injecting a heavy bias. I’d guess that computer science is better represented on Google than any other research discipline.
Even with respect to computer science though, I think the point is dead wrong. For example, take an awesome introductory textbook like Sipser’s Introduction to the Theory of Computation. You can work through that book doing all the exercises in a few weekends, and it is such a pleasure to read that it’s hard to put it down. There’s no way you could learn as much as efficiently by randomly jumping from topic to topic on Wikipedia and reading online resources.
A good textbook is still pretty much the greatest bargain in the known universe.
I assume this is only a matter of time, not anything fundamental—it happened earlier to computer science than to other disciplines, but it is probably more often than not true already, and will be nearly universally true in matter of years.
I agree that the information of almost all research disciplines is likely to eventually show up on Google, but as of 2010 - well, you’d have to take my nonfiction books from my cold dead hands!
You sound partly aware of this, but I think your reference case is likely to be injecting a heavy bias. I’d guess that computer science is better represented on Google than any other research discipline.
Even with respect to computer science though, I think the point is dead wrong. For example, take an awesome introductory textbook like Sipser’s Introduction to the Theory of Computation. You can work through that book doing all the exercises in a few weekends, and it is such a pleasure to read that it’s hard to put it down. There’s no way you could learn as much as efficiently by randomly jumping from topic to topic on Wikipedia and reading online resources.
A good textbook is still pretty much the greatest bargain in the known universe.
I assume this is only a matter of time, not anything fundamental—it happened earlier to computer science than to other disciplines, but it is probably more often than not true already, and will be nearly universally true in matter of years.
I agree that the information of almost all research disciplines is likely to eventually show up on Google, but as of 2010 - well, you’d have to take my nonfiction books from my cold dead hands!