Times: Scan this Book!

Very interesting article on the on-going digitazation of books and knowledge. Scan this Book! by Kevin Kelly in the Sunday May 14, 2006 edition of the The New York Times.

It will be quite interesting to witness the unraveling of this scanning enterprise. Can't help but be reminded of the ending of Ray Bradburry's Fahrenheit 451, where books are temporarily being brainitized in order to fight against the volatile nature some people force on them. There are some reasons to be concerned with culture concentration and monopoly even if they happen officially to ease culture access to everybody. Culture ownership also rhymes with censorphip, and the Chinese eagerness in this adventure is bitter sweet.

Some interesting numbers mentioned in the article:
"From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages."

At a time where giga sounds ol' school, it is almost shocking to learn that printed productions over the history are counted in millions. The web indeed can claim to be a tool of expression for the masses.

"The size of this abandoned library is shocking: about 75 percent of all books in the world's libraries are orphaned. Only about 15 percent of all books are in the public domain. A luckier 10 percent are still in print. The rest, the bulk of our universal library, is dark."

How long before the creation of a resistance movement for the praise of the dark library? Small communities sharing and reading from ghostly books that exist only in the physical world.

We have scanned books too here on rahdel, the intent being to reflect on our culture as it was seen and advertized in the past (example A and B). Will it be possible to do the same thing in the future with digitized knowledge for which edits leave no trace? E-books will always be mirrors of today and may not capture the evolution of our thinking.