Ted Gup's short essay, "The End of Serendipity," begins with a childhood recollection of a leather bound encyclopedia collection. Gup compares the outdated books to his sons' collection, held entirely on a CD-Rom. As Gup laments the encyclopedia of his childhood, he maintains that his children miss out on entire learning experiences because their "keyword" search doesn't allow for an unintentional discovery of new and surprising bits of knowledge. Instead, their discoveries are limited to what they type into a search engine, which weeds "out that which they deem extraneous" (250).

VERSUS

Gup disagrees with most people who say that the filtering of information about a specific topic is a good thing, and he uses the examples of an online edition of the newspaper to support his position. Gup believes that people pass over stories they normally wouldn't while browsing the daily news on the Internet. Gup's version of cyberspace is a word of limited knowledge, where "nothing will come unless summoned" (251).

For Gup, the problem with the vast amount of knowledge on the Internet is that people think there is an answer to everything. The comparison of Microsoft to a church without any challenging Luthers provides an example of how the computer generation fails to confront the credibility of the answers to all our questions. Instead, Gup would rather that we search out our own answers, stating, "Sometimes a miss produces more than a hit" (252). The idea of a browser is being misunderstood, and instead becomes a precise search where success is based on accuracy.

There is merit to the modernist thought of Gup. His lamentation of the old-fashioned encyclopedia and his comparison of Microsoft to one-track minds make for enjoyable reading, but the essence of his argument is misdirected. Gup is too general in his analysis of the world he calls cyberspace. The relevance of search engines has more to do with ease than with the lack of discovery for new knowledge, and I'd much rather read my newspaper online for free than pay fifty cents for an abundance of advertisements and a waste of trees.

The serendipitous mind will search for knowledge whether or not it's in an encyclopedia. I agree, chance discoveries may be less possible with frugal search engines, but we cannot undervalue the amount of power the information superhighway contains for those with a desire to learn. The computer is the single most effective device to learning stimulation and cannot be surpassed by any old fashioned encyclopedia. There are no boundaries or second editions on the Internet, which is never outdated, having neither beginning nor end. So, in conclusion, I would have to argue that serendipity is just beginning.

CyberReader. 2nd ed. Ed. Victor J. Vitanza. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. 250-253.