Paul Courant responds to my comments in PW about Google Books (The Googlization of Everything)

I continue to believe that had Google not embarked on this project, and showed the world that mass digitization of library collections could actually be done, we would still be counting the corpus of digitized work by tens of thousands instead of millions. To be sure, my assertion here is not subject to proof. We cannot know what would have happened had Google not gone into the scanning business. What we do know is that no one else was doing it. And no one else is doing it. That's not a fallacy, but a fact. Actually, two facts. Maybe someone else would have done it. But when? I'm a lot older than Siva, so I'm the one who gets to be impatient when it comes to providing the riches of the world's academic libraries to the people of the world.

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Posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan, February 16, 2011 11:42 AM

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A book in progress by

Siva Vaidhyanathan

This blog, the result of a collaboration between myself and the Institute for the Future of the Book, is dedicated to exploring the process of writing a critical interpretation of the actions and intentions behind the cultural behemoth that is Google, Inc. The book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states? [more]

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