I find that the practice of reading any given stream of data without some directed filtering on my own part is relatively low.
But once you do find a specific topic of interest, the ability to go directly to high-grade, quality sources on that topic is hugely useful.
I've been pursuing just such a research project over the past several years, and tools such as /r/scholar and Library Genesis (as well as traditional bookstores and libraries) are phenomenally useful.
The problem I increasingly run into in the online world is that first-order sources -- social media, blogs, and for the most part even news media, are of exceeding poor quality. They fail to cite sources, they're often simply memetic rip-offs, or copy highlights from corporate press releases. I highlighted an instance just today concerning a biomethane bus story out of the UK -- as with many renewable energy stories, it was lacking in specific quantification and contextual information, which I've supplied:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/ZmMg...
Worth noting as well: the source of the additional information was 1) Wikipedia (for population measures), my own familiarity with human dietary baselines, the International Energy Agency, and a UK government office which posts its data reports online.
The ability to dig into specific academic articles is huge though. I'm also finding a renewed love of books -- there's something about going through a work that someone spent a few years assembling and citing (books lacking indices, bibliographies, and footnotes or end-notes are not worth having).
What's killer now is to be able to read a book, see a point of interest, follow the citation, and then call up the specific paper or report there and then to see what exactly it says. This both hugely increases the information available to the researcher, and reduces the friction of verifying citations. Often you'll find that there are foundational works, otherwise not generally available, which are very useful.
Those published prior to ~1920 are very frequently freely available. Project Gutenberg and The Internet Archive have wide-ranging collections, but there are other organizations which have their own assemblages of works (including, ironically given my own views on the subjects, many free-market fundamentalist and libertarian organizations).
Among my bigger frustrations is actually managing all of this -- tools to bookmark, reference, cite, annotate, call-up, etc., electronic media are greatly wanting.
But once you do find a specific topic of interest, the ability to go directly to high-grade, quality sources on that topic is hugely useful.
I've been pursuing just such a research project over the past several years, and tools such as /r/scholar and Library Genesis (as well as traditional bookstores and libraries) are phenomenally useful.
The problem I increasingly run into in the online world is that first-order sources -- social media, blogs, and for the most part even news media, are of exceeding poor quality. They fail to cite sources, they're often simply memetic rip-offs, or copy highlights from corporate press releases. I highlighted an instance just today concerning a biomethane bus story out of the UK -- as with many renewable energy stories, it was lacking in specific quantification and contextual information, which I've supplied: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/ZmMg...
Worth noting as well: the source of the additional information was 1) Wikipedia (for population measures), my own familiarity with human dietary baselines, the International Energy Agency, and a UK government office which posts its data reports online.
The ability to dig into specific academic articles is huge though. I'm also finding a renewed love of books -- there's something about going through a work that someone spent a few years assembling and citing (books lacking indices, bibliographies, and footnotes or end-notes are not worth having).
What's killer now is to be able to read a book, see a point of interest, follow the citation, and then call up the specific paper or report there and then to see what exactly it says. This both hugely increases the information available to the researcher, and reduces the friction of verifying citations. Often you'll find that there are foundational works, otherwise not generally available, which are very useful.
Those published prior to ~1920 are very frequently freely available. Project Gutenberg and The Internet Archive have wide-ranging collections, but there are other organizations which have their own assemblages of works (including, ironically given my own views on the subjects, many free-market fundamentalist and libertarian organizations).
Among my bigger frustrations is actually managing all of this -- tools to bookmark, reference, cite, annotate, call-up, etc., electronic media are greatly wanting.