In 2008, Apple deity Steve Jobs damned the Amazon Kindle to the technological abyss by asserting on eBook readers, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Fast-foward to 2010 and chuckle with glee from your comfy desk chair as you watch his holiness make a u-turn with all the elegance of an agitated baboon as the iPad comes out, brimming with eBook reader features and plans to release books on the app store. But maybe Jobs wasn’t talking out of his iArse back then, as Google takes up hammers to nail down the coffin of the printed word, people are still reading – but Google want their own say on how they do so.
Google have been, for lack of a better word, prolific in their endeavours – rising from an obscure, oddly named search engine to a main player in almost every digital pie they can stick their grubby little fingers into. Having perfected and, with increasing speed, enacted the art of data collection, and having catalogued nearly every scrap of data, they’re moving on to the most old school of old school information distribution and are attempting to digitise books…
For around six years now, Google have been feaverishly cataloging books faster than a hyperactive librarian, meticulously scanning page after page and applying character recognition to create a vast database of books and their content, with a view to have search terms passed through the data and return books that contain information on your search term. The amount of content that you’ll get to see from results is, as of yet, undetermined, as Google are, as you’d expect, being put through the motions of copyright issues. The overarching concept is that, rather than searching to find websites with the information you need, or having to face the daring feat of going to your local library for books on the subject, you can get information the credibility of a book without the hassle and trauma of standing upright.
We’re missing the bigger picture here – Google have tirelessly worked to build what is essentially a global centre for websites, videos, shopping and anything that the internet can do. But there’s always been a divide (a ‘digital divide’ if you will) between information readily available digitally and what’s hard to obtain, but often more useful, in hard copy – once again, also, it’s a trade off between convenience and precision.
It’s not unlike Wikipedia, show me a single regular internet user who hasn’t used the editable encyclopedia in some capacity, it is used because it is a prolific and centralised hub of information. The problem with Wikipedia, as with any website, is that there is a big difference in how this information is moderated – although, despite the bad press it gets, Wikipedia is arguably a more reliable source than other sites as a whole, because it is moderated to a degree whereas the web is not – which means there is no guarantee that the information you see is correct. Getting a book published is another aquatic vertebrate teapot, however, as a manuscript, reseach and information is subject to detailed editing, proof reading and review before a publisher sinks it’s cash into bringing it to paper and print. Non-fiction, therefore, and in particular publications of a scientific or otherwise factual matter is heavily moderated and it’s content is, again arguably, of greater veracity. Google is using their technology to make an online encyclopedia of entirely moderated information, with a plethora of fiction to boot.
I’m usually the first, or at least the second, to bemoan how a new project or gadget won’t be a success for this reason or that reason – but for once the sneeringly cynical side of my brain is taking a holiday, because I think this is fantastic. Many have accepted the sad but ultimately inevitable fact that libraries and books aren’t the primary method of getting information anymore, as with everything the convenience of our ability to retreive massive volumes of information with little more than a few finger movements has lead to it’s downturn. However, if we can get the same availability from sources as reputable and scrutinised as books, plus Google’s ubiquity as an information source, the oft-quoted dystopian vision of a world built on unmoderated and inaccurate information can be shut down by the luddite morons that preach it.
If Jobs is to be believed, the printed word might be dead, but it lives on in another form, albeit an abstract and entirely non-physical form, almost like a spirit…it’s oddly poetic. Gah, that was sickeningly sentimental.
Oh yeah, and if anyone smugly declares anything about the printed word technically living on as eInk screens on eBook Readers they will receive a swift and precise beating with my Sherlock Holmes collection – which is a heavy motherfucker.
