Assignment #3

My Thoughts on the reading, “Future Reading, Digitization and its discontents”

It is second nature for people to want a quick way of finding information. The information age makes everything going online the most logical step. When equipped, everyone would have the massive ability of finding and empowering themselves. This does however have a coiunter affect as it empowers Google and others as an umbrella owner of that information. I believe the main idea of the essay is where the evolution of knowledge is heading, controlled by those in power.
Googles search engine, which has equipped itself to move on to other searches like the finding of literature and the reading of it in a convenient way. It is a reminder of the way Microfilm was tried to be used in the 70’s, reprinting copies of books on film to be seen by the masses. It was a good example of technology trying to hard to make itself the next natural step of passing information. It easily failed because of the massive need for information was too much to be supported by the machines available. It was controlled by specific group and used with a not so accessible machine to run the microfilm. Computers have revolutionized the way information can be accessed. Everyone or mostly everyone has capable means of finding a computer, making it easier for the everyday person to access information.
The essay claims that the firms involved in the scanning of the literature, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are by no means doing away with the scribbled texts of today, but making it better for everyone who reads and wants to know. This is a farce, because the Greeks, who had control over history in a way that Google has today, did so and used the power to trap all information and make it their own. The Greeks put away the scrolls from other countries and gave them copies, what is to stop them from changing the information that was accounted and changing it to another. Christopher Columbus is remembered for discovering America, but the fact that the Indians and Vikings were here prior had no affect because it was rarely discussed, talked about in all the books or included in common nostalgia. Even though discovered by others, the information documented by the Greeks aka possible Google can be seen as something else and changed to become what everyone would believe as fact. It is because of this people or countries, which are not particular worth remembering in Google’s eyes or moneys eyes, the objective of a company is to make money, actual facts that are to be displayed dictates what history is told. After a while, people would forget what fiction is and what fact is, putting history in a lonely second.
The more powerful and economically funded countries have their history remembered. The United States and Briton can now offer and control, even though not on purpose, the information that gets sent and received amongst the scanned literature is going to be derived from the most predominate countries with books. The essays pointed out Sixty million Britons have a hundred and sixteen million public-library books at their disposal, while more than 1.1 billion Indians have only thirty-six million. It is a matter of who is going to be remembered and who is disregarded. Third world countries are not going to be seen as money well spent, but remember as the “Viking and Indians” of our day.
This is the wave of the future and as so delicately entitled “Future Reading” by the author. The author did this because the paper he just wrote was going to be scanned and/or read by somebody from a different country or place and definitely a different time period without ever leaving the convenience of home. I thought about the title how this digital age has impacted my life. The entire world I live in, I have had privy to two basics, television and radio. The books are the last step in an evolutionary process of means of like magazines and newspapers. The information age is doing away with the nit and gritty work of harvesting it, by searching on your own two feet. Basic Television has been replaced by Cable made by Time Warner or the new Fios by Verizon. The new slogan for information might quiet possible be “Library Books” by Google and not the author who originally created it. The obstacles of not knowing information and then finding it out is getting easier, but at what cost of absolute accuracy is at stake. For me to believe after reading this essay that everything going online is a good thing is counterproductive as it has actually opened my eyes to that not all control is a good thing, it may quite possible make you blind sighted on the actual facts your looking for.