The Age of the search

This is one of those articles that it seems to me that well-read people will need to be acquainted with. The article is called "The Universal Library" and it's by George Dyson, reflecting further on his visit to Google. I've called it "the age of the search" because that is a refrain in the article and seems to me to sum up better the most interesting point of the article.

First up, having decided to publish my book through a print on demand route for a number of reasons [one being that I think this may be the future for books that are unlikely to be high volume and I want to understand by doing], this chunk was intriguing.

soon enough the options will include bookshops offering to print a copy, just for you. Google Library and Google Print have been renamed Google Book Search — not because Google is shying away from building the Universal Library (with links to the Universal Bookstore) but because search comes first. To paraphrase Tolkien: "One ring to find them, one ring to bind them, one ring to rule them all."

And note that the search is the important thing rather than the artefact itself. That's why the rights lobby have got it so wrong. The point is to be found not to hide info until someone pays. The value will be in the capacity to add value and a book will only be a part of the whole package of what an author is selling.

Does it mean the end of the book? I tend to think not and agree that

... so many of us (not only authors) love books. In their combination of mortal, physical embodiment with immortal, disembodied knowledge, books are the mirror of ourselves. Books are not mere physical objects. They have a life of their own...

The article looks briefly at the info-maths of the universal library and points out the meaningful role of the author:

"If you had found an index volume it wouldn't help you any," Professor Wallhausen had warned, "because the contents of the Universal Library are not only indexed correctly, but also in every possible incorrect and misleading manner." The Library, indeed, contained everything, Borges explained, including "the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue..."
Even in the Age of Search, we still need authors to find the meaningful books!

In fact we might say that the author is the search engine, a specialised type, customising the search to the human mind, interests and cultural specificities.

Edge 174:
Filed in: library, googol, books, information, knowledge, search