The difference between LJ and Skyehawke

[blamebrampton]

In one of my stories, I have a scene in which the bad guys attempt to take control of the Thames Barrier to hold it open while an artificial storm surge races up the river to flood much of London. It's told in fast snatches, but there are a number of very clear bits of information given to show what's happening, including:

The rest of Draco's Unspeakables arrive. He speaks quickly: "Thames Barrier, we think there's a team using dark magic to hold it open. Storm surge is coming, a big one."

A few people responded to its posting on LJ with "I had no idea what the Barrier was, so I looked it up, it's cool/was on Doctor Who!"

Last night I posted that chapter on Skyhawke. Today I received a comment similar to "Look, I liked it, but you'd have made the ending so much more gripping if you'd explained what the Barrier was." *

I was THIS CLOSE to answering with "Thanks very much for letting me know you liked it, but if you need more Barrier info, you can find it easily! In my day we did not have Google and you had to shag computer scientists to get internet access, so just count yourself lucky, young whippersnapper and use the tools Tim Berners-Lee gave you!"

I held back, but only because I knew I'd receive a reply saying "Berners-Lee? Who?!"

Ah LJ folk, Let me never take you for granted ...

* I should emphasise that I genuinely think this person meant to be helpful here. They were not being intentionally annoying, I am just the least patient closet librarian in the vicinity.

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if it was something obscure I would not mock, but any search engine will bring you something helpful if you type in Thames Barrier. And if you can navigate Skyehawke, you should be able to navigate a search engine.

They curse Mosaic, which took Net access from an arcane art best practiced after the offering up of arts student nubility to a simple URL entry and click. Tim B-L receives hate mail from geeks who haven't been able to pull girls in black miniskirts since the mid 90s.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I think it's eminently mockable.

I'm always surprised by the number of people who haven't mastered the basic art of searching, or even indexes, come to that.

And then grateful as it keeps me in a job. :D

If the buggers could use the books to look stuff up, they woulnd't need me at all. So the google fu has to be rationed, sorry.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Good point. If people learned to use the language and their brains, I would be back to singing jazz standards for pennies and potatoes.