Thinking about it, it seems to me that there could be a couple of possible reasons for this.

1. Laziness – When the situation calls for it I will go and search the BeJaysus out of something until I’m satisifed with the answers, so that doesn’t seem to be it..
2. Ease of access – there’s normally a better chance of getting information quickly from someone close by, particularly in a work context, but I will happily take my time and get specific items from specific people, and sometimes that can take a little time, so thats not it…
3. Contextual/Added information – whereby the information gleaned from a particular person will have added relevance due to situational experience, etc.. Closer to a winner here…
4. The personal touch – here we seem to have a winner. I like interacting with people. I’m a social beast, like most of the human race. I occasionally work from home and find the boredom to be stunning in the extreme, so I only do it when absolutely have to.

So it would seem that I like people. Todays instantly accessible information has given me direct access such as this, because in the past there wasn’t anywhere near as much generalised knowledge swirling around in both the aether and people’s head, so carefully lookup was needed to find information, meaning not as many did it.

The synopsis I draw from this (something other, much more clever people have figured out already ) is that the modern age with fingertip availability, social knowledge transfer, and the great swarm of data living in us all, is in fact yet another social enabler. People can interact even more now than ever before, and in new and interesting ways due to the magic of the tech and the evolution of society and societal memes.

Makes you happy to be knowledge foraging…

Interesting reading