The index is just a starting point. We use an index to reach the information we really want, not to absorb it, and this is true both in traditional libraries as well as the internet. On the web, Google is our index, but once I get to the books (read: websites), it leaves something to be desired. This is the step I’m talking about. I can read about recorded time in the same way that I can with books. I need something like the Amazon Kindle for the web.

The other time problem I’m talking about is the overwhelming focus on the present. I’m not sure that’s a time problem so much as a focus problem. If we looked at a graph of the amount of information on the web related to history, we’d see a dot-com-like bubble around the creation of the internet and a slow trickle leading up to now. If we don’t bring our past history onto our current medium, I think we’ll have distorted history (and Wikipedia just doesn’t cut it). Isn’t it inevitable that this will somehow come back to haunt us?

Humans make sense of information in a number of ways, in terms of logical sequencing and cross-referencing, and there is not necessarily one “best” way. For examples found in your post – either demonstrated in your style as an author or pointed out as part of your commentary:

1. Standard narrative organization – An introduction with the premise and subject of the information sets expectations, subsequent chapters, pages, paragraphs, etc. provide supporting detail, grouped in clusters that resemble arguments which build upon one another sequentially–all building toward a comprehensive understanding by the reader of the broad subject laid out in an introduction. A conclusion and afterward often closes the loop, and tells the reader what, if anything, from the author’s point of view, is left unresolved at the time of publication. Date of publication is something that you will find in just about any book, magazine or periodical published since the dewey decimal system was created, if not earlier, but I’m no library scientist.

2. Chronologically. History jumps around by topic and many unrelated things are happening in parallel. Ancient Mayans new much more about time, astronomy and science than did Dark Age Europeans and probably most 21st Century American school children. At any given moment, a person could be writing a well-researched masterpiece that advances human knowledge of a subject or discipline and accounts for all prior knowledge through references, while some other person could be writing a blog posting about the same subject based solely on their personal observations (no offense). These events – and human knowledge in general, follows no set path. As you point out, knowledge is discovered, documented (or not) and lost (or preserved) and may or may not be shared, but you are absolutely right – we do need to get our collective act together (or create tools/standards to facilitate this) if we intend to make all of this information as usable and retrievable as possible given any number of filtering, indexing or sorting criteria. Again, I’m no library scientist, but I do seem to recall a few books I’ve read (some of them pre-dating your Facebook Wall), having things called Editions (each subsequent edition superceding those that came before them), Bibliographies (which also contain dates of publication).

3. Indexing. Information in books, on the web, and even on good signs in public spaces, are often indexed by topic, chronology, keyword, location, language, zip code, familial/heirarchical orders (parent/child, etc.)…..the possibilities are endless. I think this is where your realization that it is more that just a time problem points toward solutions – many of which exist but are simply underutilized today. Many search tools can search and sort by one or two of these criteria at a time. If search results could be searched, filtered, and sorted according to any combination of these criteria, it would be much easier for someone with a mind to research this problem of asynchronous information to determine how much of it is organization and how much of it is truly a “gap”. Indexes have also existed for centuries, and a good index will save you from having to read a book from beginning to end as you suggested. Strangely, to do so you always have to start in the back. However, there’s a mini-index in the front of most books also – the table of contents, which will usually tell you up front which page the index can be found on.

So in short, I think your conclusion and points about the need to sort information chronologically on the web is valid, but that your conclusion that it’s not just a time problem, it’s a bit of a sequence problem, a focus problem, and a hubris problem – is the more important one, and should probably be the subject of a broader work. Since Library scientists have been hard at work on this problem for years and I think that in collaboration with IT people a solution can be found to your web conundra. They can most likely help with just about everything except for the hubris.