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.

RE: Google and God's Mind