LJNDawson.com, Consulting to the Book Publishing Industry
Book Publishing Industry Consultant

Google, Books, and Mutable Information

Robert Darnton has a great piece in the NY Review of Books on information in the digital age - how do we trust blogs, how do we look at information when so much damage can be done by the instant spiraling of rumors on the web, how do we regard the viral nature of information? He traces the history of the written word from vellum to Google and notes:

Information has never been stable. That may be a truism, but it bears pondering. It could serve as a corrective to the belief that the speedup in technological change has catapulted us into a new age, in which information has spun completely out of control. I would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively?and even how to appreciate old books.

He then goes on to talk about Google's role in digitizing books, pointing out that Google will not be digitizing ALL the books ever written, and that as Google makes choices about what to digitize, important books could be left out because Google cannot recognize their importance. As Darnton says, "The criteria of importance change from generation to generation, so we cannot know what will matter to our descendants....Google employs hundreds, perhaps thousands, of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer." A really thought-provoking read.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , June 4, 08, 9:59 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post
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