The internet is boring. And the trash is still there. Its just become reputable instead.
Can you expand on how a card catalog improved the world? As a kid I used the card catalog a lot, both the physical version and the later electronic versions. Full text search definitely leads to pulling in information from a wider selection of sources.
I remember a lot of stratification of news sources pre-Google (which news channel you watched, which papers/magazines you read). Did Google cause reliance on one source of information, or does Google simply exist in a world where people tend towards echo chambers? How would Alta Vista have improved that?
i was lamenting the library recently and remembered how books were organized on shelves using the dewey decimal system
this meant that if you knew of one book that has something you're looking for, you can find all the _other_ books about the same topic right next to the first book, even if you knew nothing about the contents of the related books
I think the curious crazy tid bits are still there.