The availability and accessibility of information dramatically changes over time. Google results change based on what people are talking about and what has happened lately. When I wrote the article on 'Lesbian Science Fiction' for Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy, in 2008, I wound up looking up MZB on the internet really, really thoroughly, in order to track down the names and publication dates of her early SF stories in lesbian newsletters. Consequently, I found out about the Breendoggle and read her depositions... but while that information was out there, it was not on the first page of the results, or even the fifth. It was about as prominent as the info on those lesbian newsletters, i.e. you needed to be digging among pages of same-y search engine results intentionally looking for something different. I'm glad that this info has become more prominent, which I think is at least partly because people are more willing to talk about it and link to it-- certainly after I found out about the whole thing back then I emailed various people I knew to let them know about it, which would have gotten the deposition more hits.
So while this has always been Google-able information, it has not always been obvious, clear, comes-right-up-when-you-type-in-the-name information. I'm really glad it is now, and I feel we should all do everything in our power to make it stay that way. But I certainly don't blame anybody who Googled in 2008 and didn't go to page fifteen for not hearing about this, you know?
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2014-06-10 09:02 pm
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So while this has always been Google-able information, it has not always been obvious, clear, comes-right-up-when-you-type-in-the-name information. I'm really glad it is now, and I feel we should all do everything in our power to make it stay that way. But I certainly don't blame anybody who Googled in 2008 and didn't go to page fifteen for not hearing about this, you know?