The article on Google books, Digitization and the European libraries addressed a subject that has long been of interest to me. As a undergrad I was a Media Arts & Design major. Half of the time I felt like I was majoring in the internet. One of my required courses was on media law. Interestingly enough, this was probably one of my favorite courses, albeit the least creative. In this class we spent a lot of time discussing how Google is scanning books upon books in order to make them easily accessible to the public. Admittedly I haven’t given much thought to the subject since completing that course over three years ago and now, so I am sure the project has undergone many changes along the way. Our primary concern when discussing it was how they were getting around that pesky copyright issue. Is it possible to just scan an unimaginable amount of books, put them on the internet, and not have to pay enormous fees to do so? Copyright privileges don’t come cheap, especially for the amount of books Google has used.
Additionally, I just don’t get how the leading nations of Europe are having troubles financing such a large project while Google seemingly has had none. I agree with the one leader that it is concerning that Google’s distribution of materials would facilitate the interpretation of European literature, politics and history. I would be a little alarmed too if the heritage of my country was translated into Americanese before I had a chance to do so first. Yes, it is great to have multiple viewpoints involved, but I do feel bad for the Europeans for falling behind.
Preserving history and literature is incredibly, undeniably important, but I can’t shake the weird, creepy feeling I get when I think about a world where a book, made out of good ole’ paper, does not exist. If I think about this too much I might give myself an existential crisis, but I’m not totally down with Google, even if I religiously use their search engine/email/maps/cellular telephone/browser, etc. I just don’t want to wake up one day and realize that Google is turning us all into robots that are shaped like the one on my Android.
The articles on computer hardware and software had me reminiscing back to my glory days as a five-year-old. My father is a sales engineer for a company that sells computer parts to some other company who assembles them or something like that. In any case, he was always on the up and coming trends, and I’ll never forget the joy I felt when I played the bird racing game on our 1988 Macintosh desktop computer. The evolution of how computers have gone from that black and white, no internet connection, boxy looking contraption to this vibrant, RAM infused beauty I have on my lap is astonishing. As another part of my media background I had a brief history course on computers and I have seen the exhibit on them in the Air & Space Museum. Is there ever going to be a time where we just cannot improve on them anymore? Reading the articles now, especially on software, you realize how much you take for granted receiving a laptop installed with the basic necessities. If you need anything extra, you just pop over to Staples or download it from the internet. It has become so convenient and user friendly to connect with others that I almost get annoyed by the fact that there is still not a universal wi-fi system. Oh well, I’ll keep dreaming.
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