Add to this that no one cares about whether the data is even correct.
It's interesting how our culture has adopted the mantra that "computers are never wrong." Yet, every day in the media there are dozens or hundreds of articles about computers and systems making mistakes. I wish we could break that cycle of believing anything that comes off a screen.
I fight my own minor battles against this weekly. As part of my job, I maintain an online directory of about 70,000 businesses related to the one I work for. I regularly get e-mails from people saying things like, "The phone number for X is wrong. Google says it's this...!"
Then when I look into it, Google is wrong. But because it's Google, people assume it's right, and my web sites are wrong. We need to teach people that not only do computers make mistakes, but Google is the king of all mistake-generating engines.
It's interesting how our culture has adopted the mantra that "computers are never wrong." Yet, every day in the media there are dozens or hundreds of articles about computers and systems making mistakes. I wish we could break that cycle of believing anything that comes off a screen.
I fight my own minor battles against this weekly. As part of my job, I maintain an online directory of about 70,000 businesses related to the one I work for. I regularly get e-mails from people saying things like, "The phone number for X is wrong. Google says it's this...!"
Then when I look into it, Google is wrong. But because it's Google, people assume it's right, and my web sites are wrong. We need to teach people that not only do computers make mistakes, but Google is the king of all mistake-generating engines.