Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful.

The fondest dream of the information age is to create an archive of all knowledge. You might call it the Alexandrian fantasy, after the great library founded by Ptolemy I in 286 BC.

Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it, and every day it grows.

In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING. Filter the information: extract for knowledge.

Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance. These filters protect against advertising.

Filter third for reliability. This filter protects against politicians.

Filter fourth for completeness. This filter protects against the media.

The dark of the web is illuminated from within.