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Calvin Mooer
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Mooers' Law: painful & troublesome
It is now my suggestion that many people may not want information, and that they will avoid using a system precisely because it gives them information… Having information is painful and troublesome. We have all experienced this. If you have information, you must first read it, which is not always easy. You must then try to understand it… Understanding the information may show that your work was wrong, or may show that your work was needless… Thus not having and not using information can often lead to less trouble and pain than having it.
When I googled “Calvin Mooers” only 16 citations were returned, including: the library at the University of Nevada, Reno; an online overview for an introductory course on information science at New Jersey’s Science & Technology University; and a profile of a young librarian who lists Mooers as one of his heroes.
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Home > Factual Reports > People Calvin Mooers
Sometimes we don’t want new information, he argued — less is more. Now, Calvin Mooers was also a computer pioneer and entrepreneur. He coined the terms “information retrieval” and “descriptors,” wrote some of the earliest interactive programming languages, and founded the Zator company to develop and market his ingenious automatic punch card information retrieval system. But despite his significant contributions, Mooers is little known outside the information science community, and neither is his law.
Even within this small community, Mooer’s Law is often minsinterpreted as a maxim about the importantance of information system usability. In the words of online information industry pioneer and Dialog founder, Roger Summit, “Mooers’ Law tells us that information will be used in direct proportion to how ieasy it is to obtain.” Though this insight is accurate and important, it’s not what Calvin mooers had in mind. Consider the author’s explanation of his own law: