Well, I told everyone that this debate is hard to avoid, and true enough this morning's New York Times features an essay by one of the co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin, defending the controversial Google Books project. I learned one fascinating detail: When the project was launched in 2004, it was called Google Print, in my mind a more accurate description. Why was it changed and when? It should come as no surprise that Brin writes only about the positive outcomes of digitization. Imagine Henry Ford a hundred years ago marketing his products. Maybe Ford couldn't see the negatives looming down the proverbial road. The automobile enabled mobility, independence, speed, commerce, etc. But it also brought road deaths, pollution (in many forms), suburban sprawl, and cultural changes that we're still discovering the consequences of. Brin puts on the hat of the philanthropist (a familiar move) to mask the essentially commercial nature of the digitization project. Letters to the editor will flood the paper in the next couple of days (no pun intended). Take a close look at the fake woodcut illustration by Holly Stevenson that accompanies Brin's essay. What's going on? Are the books coming or going? What does the arc represent: a server? What is the storm? Nature itself? Write a comment please. It won't hurt.
Here's the link: Google Books to the Rescue!
From this page you can access dozens of articles from the New York Times archive on this subject. Here's the first one, from December 18, 2003, when the "service" was not even a month old: Google Print Launches
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As for the woodprint, I like Casey's questions (even if rhetorical). While the format of animals entering two by two into the haven of the ark is classic, I must observe that at my public library back home, the book return insists that books go in spine first...
ReplyDeleteThe article suggests that Google Books and the digital platform will save books from almost certain loss and destruction. It doesn't mention, however, that digital information is just as subject to damage, theft, loss, etc, as physical information. Not to mention that they aren't digitalizing every copy of every edition, and so quite a bit of information only contained in those other copies of physical books will still have the potential to be lost forever.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like libraries aren't the only cultural institutions going digital these day. This short Newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/217012) foreshadows an even larger shift.
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