Google & Books

Is Google’s intention to digitize all the world’s books a good thing or a bad thing and for whom? Carefully cite at least two sources from the reading or lectures of your answers.

“Knowledge is Power” (Sir Francis Bacon – Philosopher)

"According to the Bacon's aphorism "Knowledge is Power" and Google is conscious of this thing and it is doing the best in other to digitized every book in every corner of the world."

My first impression is negative and I'll explain my reasons, first of all Google is a company and every company must have a profit in order to survive, we know that none of them is a good Samaritan.

Secondly it is not possible to concentrate the knowledge of the world in the hand of a company a plausible risks is that they can decide to sell the World’s knowledge to someone rather than another one, another risks is that they can mystify the history and so on.

Someone can argue that the history has always written and handed down by the strongest and possibly there had been a mystification, in other words they decided their truth for the entire globe.

If Google will follow this strategy we will have a worst future for the next generation but if Google will give voice to everyone will be obviously a positive thing, the next generations will have a complete and verifiable source of the historical events but this has a cost, who will pay?

I attended a short course on creative writing  at the University of Cambridge, the first exercise was to write two paragraphs of fantasy.

After having written my piece the lecturer told us to take the piece of a classmate and to arrive to a conclusion it has been a stunning exercise.

In my opinion this is a form of anti copyright because my classmate has distorted and changed my characters maintaining a small part of my plot.

At this point I'm asking to myself the history of my character has been improved or worsened? is it the true concept of truth?

In conclusion I partly agree with Jeff Jarvis on his acronym "What Would Google Do?" this is positive but incomplete and in order to avoid any kind of concentration or monopoly which goes against the law of "the invisible hand" (A. Smith) for correctness we should also say "What Would Yahoo Do?" if not it seems a mere advertising.

Sources: The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry) by Siva Vaidhanathan, 1^st paragraph – University of California Press

WWGD? Google as the new pressroom by Jeff Jarvis