noteworthy wrote:
] ] If you are taken in by all the fanfare and hoopla
] ] that have attended Google's latest project, you would think
] ] Sergey and and Larry are well on their way to godliness.
] ]
] ] I do not share that opinion.

Nor do I, but for entirely different reasons then this author.

Google is getting a lot of attention for doing something that a lot of other people have been doing for years. Thats the point where you are too famous to be cool.

But this author seems to be confused about the greater point, which is that books and buildings full of them are rapidly going the way of the horse and carriage.

The old romance of books was always tied to the information that they contain. But as the information is moved online the romance continues, shucked of its meaning, and we see people who love what books are rather then what they do. These people are going to be very disappointed as time goes on.

Brewster Kahle, who ought to be celebrated by the mainstream, instead of Google, for this kind of work, gave a wonderful talk at the Library of Congress on monday which was carried on CSPAN under the heading "Digital Future" which I memed previously. (Search my memestream for "span" and you can probably watch the video online.)

The fact is that you can print a bounded book, and digital paper technologies mostly elminiate the need. Neither of these things are in widespread adoption, but they are available, and you'll have them soon. The ability to search, sort, organize, recontextualize, and recommend this information with computers will be a vast improvement on row after row of dusty, decaying stacks of paper that previously served as our information infrastructure. The ability to provide instant access to all of this information anywhere in the world will be a revolution in many quarters of the planet that have suffered for lack of knowledge. No longer will your social status prevent you from learning if you are sufficiently motivated, and the motivation to learn will be the greatest determining factor in the quality of one's life.

This is the potential of human knowledge coupled with information technology, and to oppose it for aesthetic reasons is despicable.

The reasonsable objection raised here is that of Intellectual Property. But what common sense cannot kill in a court room history will kill in the marketplace. People will use the information they have access to, and there is a lot of really valuable stuff which is unencumbered by copyright. As this change carries forward the information that matters will be the information that is free. The LA Times is not often blogged simply because it requires registration. By requiring registration they deminish their value in the blogosphere. The WSJ, a really good paper, is almost never blogged, because no one can afford to access it. Online, the WSJ doesn't matter.

There is a substantial need to pay people to produce information products full time. Figuring out how to do that in the context of the new technologies is hard. Our process thus far has consisted of a power struggle more then a dialog. Those who want to get paid have yet to feel particularly incented to present a reasonable way of doing so that doesn't skuttle the value of what they are being paid for. The changes I discuss here will press the issue further. Over the course of several decades the tables will turn, and those who make their living by keeping information bottled up will be forced to find an answer or become irrelevant and die.

Decius wrote:
] this author seems to be confused about the greater point,
] which is that books and buildings full of them
] are rapidly going the way of the horse and carriage.
]
] The ability to provide instant access to all of this
] information anywhere in the world will be a revolution
] in many quarters of the planet that have suffered for
] lack of knowledge.

Increasing the speed and ease of access to information is a commendable goal. For those who previously lacked access by any means, these new electronic capabilities can be quite transformative.

For those in developed countries with well-stocked public library systems and retail super-bookstores in every neighborhood, the digital library is definitely handy but ultimately less profound.

In the United States, access is basically a solved problem. While not perfectly efficient, the combination of Amazon, Borders, and the local public library have produced an effective solution.

The much harder problem, and one which the Google project as currently described would seem to do little to resolve, is the learning process itself. On a whim, I can go to the store or library and come home with a printed copy of Democracy in America in less than 30 minutes. Much of the effort of the "access" step is physical (getting to the store) rather than mental. However, it will take a substantially greater investment, both of time and mental effort, to actually read the book and incorporate de Tocqueville's insights into my worldview.

The specific mechanisms proposed by Google to assuage copyright concerns will exacerbate the already significant risks of full-text search. You can already see these problems with Google Print. By relying on keyword search as the index and interface into the library, a selection bias is introduced. By strictly limiting the ability of the reader to explore the rest of the book upon finding a "hit", the system substantially increases the likelihood that statements will be taken out of context and misunderstood by the reader.

] Given the quality of the writing in the
] blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People
] are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.
] It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are
] met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In
] that case, their rejection of my view is quite
] understandable.

The author of the L.A. Times editorial "Google and God's Mind" which seemed to make several (in my opinion short sighted) arguments against digitizing books has come out swinging at the Bloggosphere. As MemeStreams appears first on a Google Search for "Google and God's Mind" its entirely possible that my comments factored in here, although fortunately they don't seem to be referenced specifically.

Writers in the Blogosphere can be rather harsh to public figures. This public figure is rather harsh back. I'm not sure what the point of all of this bickering is. I don't care which one of you is an idiot. NoteWorthy's point that access is a mostly solved problem in the west is a good one, but it doesn't lead to the conclusion that digitizing works has no value, nor does this author's straw man argument about where else to spend the money.

You'll see books mostly go away in your lifetime. There are other, harder problems to solve about how to make the most of information resources available to you. I'd rather think about the later, but I'm still a fan of the former.

Library Journal - Revenge of the Blog People!

noteworthy wrote:
] ] If you are taken in by all the fanfare and hoopla
] ] that have attended Google's latest project, you would think
] ] Sergey and and Larry are well on their way to godliness.
] ]
] ] I do not share that opinion.

Nor do I, but for entirely different reasons then this author.

Google is getting a lot of attention for doing something that a lot of other people have been doing for years. Thats the point where you are too famous to be cool.

But this author seems to be confused about the greater point, which is that books and buildings full of them are rapidly going the way of the horse and carriage.

The old romance of books was always tied to the information that they contain. But as the information is moved online the romance continues, shucked of its meaning, and we see people who love what books are rather then what they do. These people are going to be very disappointed as time goes on.

Brewster Kahle, who ought to be celebrated by the mainstream, instead of Google, for this kind of work, gave a wonderful talk at the Library of Congress on monday which was carried on CSPAN under the heading "Digital Future" which I memed previously. (Search my memestream for "span" and you can probably watch the video online.)

The fact is that you can print a bounded book, and digital paper technologies mostly elminiate the need. Neither of these things are in widespread adoption, but they are available, and you'll have them soon. The ability to search, sort, organize, recontextualize, and recommend this information with computers will be a vast improvement on row after row of dusty, decaying stacks of paper that previously served as our information infrastructure. The ability to provide instant access to all of this information anywhere in the world will be a revolution in many quarters of the planet that have suffered for lack of knowledge. No longer will your social status prevent you from learning if you are sufficiently motivated, and the motivation to learn will be the greatest determining factor in the quality of one's life.

This is the potential of human knowledge coupled with information technology, and to oppose it for aesthetic reasons is despicable.

The reasonsable objection raised here is that of Intellectual Property. But what common sense cannot kill in a court room history will kill in the marketplace. People will use the information they have access to, and there is a lot of really valuable stuff which is unencumbered by copyright. As this change carries forward the information that matters will be the information that is free. The LA Times is not often blogged simply because it requires registration. By requiring registration they deminish their value in the blogosphere. The WSJ, a really good paper, is almost never blogged, because no one can afford to access it. Online, the WSJ doesn't matter.

There is a substantial need to pay people to produce information products full time. Figuring out how to do that in the context of the new technologies is hard. Our process thus far has consisted of a power struggle more then a dialog. Those who want to get paid have yet to feel particularly incented to present a reasonable way of doing so that doesn't skuttle the value of what they are being paid for. The changes I discuss here will press the issue further. Over the course of several decades the tables will turn, and those who make their living by keeping information bottled up will be forced to find an answer or become irrelevant and die.