Ink to Dot

The article Scan this Book! by Kevin Kelly reiterates just how powerful Google is and wants to be. The massive scanning project frighteningly reminds me of A Brave New World. Why do we need one universal library anyway? Is Google trying to monopolize knowledge? It's really a terrifying thought and one I cannot fully comprehend to imagine thousands of underpaid workers scanning thousands of books a day like robots. They may be scanning these books even as I sit here on my comfy couch typing this blog post. I suddenly feel disgusting...

Don't get me wrong, the idea of a universal library is revolutionary. One place where you can find all the knowledge you would ever need. It is a scholars dream come true. But what happens to the books after they are digitized is something that is mind boggling. Once scanned, Digital books consist of links upon links of information and can be tagged by users. These links and tags are what search engines pick up on. Is it possible that there will be so many tags for one book that a search engine will not be able to find it or archive it properly? Maybe all this interconnectedness in digital books is just too much. It's information overload. 

Kelly brings up another interesting area in the google book scanning project and that is copyrights. Google already faced copyright infringements for the scanning project, but this digitization of printed books raises interesting questions about copyright laws and what becomes of them once they are scanned. 

I recently watched a great documentary on the Google Book Scanning Project. Watch it here.