There's a big flurry of folks posting critical pieces on Kevin Kelly's New York Times "Scan This Book!" piece, most of them accusing him of too much cheerleading for business leadership on this project (scanning a Library of Everything), or for Google, or god knows what. I'm hearing a lot of this criticism from the academic blogs, although the Slashdot crowd is buzzing too. Basically, the academics think Kelly isn't critical enough of the folks at the choke points of power in this maze, like this supposed "economic" approach at the site below, which I believe are the words of Umair Haque:
Link: Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab.
The Problems With Gutopia
You know, it's quotes like this (from Kevin Kelly's recent article for the NYT Mag):
"...Brewster Kahle, an archivist overseeing another scanning project, says that the universal library is now within reach. "This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!" he shouts. "It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon."
That amaze me. Of course, the difference between now and then is that doing gives a single company - Google - enormous market power.
[You know, I didn't see anywhere in the article Kelly advocating giving Google that enormous power. Kelly also talks about Amazon Books, which has an even more direct economic model, and Project Gutenberg, which has been chugging along at a snail's pace since forever. Resenting Google's deep pockets as a way of getting something done is NOT the way to make sure it gets accomplished. Do you really want to WAIT for Project Gutenberg to do it?]
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Google is, in a very real sense, profiting enormously from the utopian naivete of the Valley. And though Kevin's article is a great read - and I'm a huge fan of his new work - this flaw makes his conclusion - a utopian vision of ubiquitous, "free", information totally invalid.
Has Kevin used Google Scholar? If you haven't, try a simple query like this.
[How insulting and elitist can you get? Does this guy even know Kevin Kelly? "Has Kevin used Google Scholar?" I'm so special I use Google Scholar and Kelly never has. GIVE ME A BREAK (OK, I'm just getting worked up over one guy who's casting himself as an expert and sounds like he's talking through his hat). Kelly probably wouldn't even dignify such ridiculous crap with a response. ]
That screen is the polar opposite of ubiquitous, free information - it is a set of links which send you to walled gardens built by academic publishers who want to charge $20, $50, or $100 or more for a single article.
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[Puh-leaze! If you want to attack Kelly, attack him for something he did, not something that pisses you off that he had nothing to do with, and which Google has nothing to do with.
So the author above has figured out that academic publishing is DEEP DEEP behind massive cost-prohibitive firewalls, ODIOUS firewalls. Absurd firewalls, because academia is not a real industry that can support an economy of charging $60-$80 for dense scholarly articles that maybe four people on earth will read. Somehow this fact has escaped academic publishers like ScienceDirect, or Taylor & Frances, etc. They live in some kind of closed bubble where they've got a lock on a price scheme with academic libraries, and they don't give a shit if the whole system becomes hermetically sealed!
And this is Google's fault exactly HOW? Google is supposed to pry open those doors, when the companies have no intention of opening their vaults?
What Google has done, which is an immense service, is to REVEAL to us this huge invisible iceberg and show exactly to what degree these odious academic publishers are controlling words, ideas, and the economics of such, even the so-called "public domain" (which I don't believe is in their vocabulary). A concept of a "public domain" is in Google's vocabulary, and when Google exposes the villains, the pure villainy of what the academic publishers and library databases are doing, IT IS GOOGLE'S FAULT?
That's what I'd call killing the messenger, and it is at the very least some seriously sloppy reasoning.]
But it is the future the Googleverse leads to. It's the inevitable result of handing informational market power over to Google - just like physical distribution economies (and price hypersensitive consumers) inevitably lead to Wal-Mart. Either one is just as evil as far as consumers are concerned.
Kevin argues that we should scan books because there is a "moral imperative to scan" - a moral imperative to make information free, essentially.
Are you kidding? That's like saying there's a moral imperative to buy gas, or to buy the cheapest goods possible - because this so-called moral imperative has a single economic effect: to line Google's pockets, handing market power over to it.
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[Did the author above "get" that Kelly's title "Scan This Book!" is a direct allusion to the Abbie Hoffman book title "Steal This Book!" from the 1960's? (How could anyone not get that? I dunno, maybe he's never used Google Scholar) In drawing a metaphor to Hoffman advocating a rebellion against the status quo, Kelly is DIRECTLY ADVOCATING CRIMINAL BOOK-SCANNING. He's saying, "Hey, if you don't want Google to have this power, if you don't want Amazon Books to have this power, they GET BUSY and SCAN THIS BOOK"! Put it up on your own site. That's a whole lot different from telling someone to BUY gas.
And if you don't start scanning, then don't come to me bitching about Google having too much power, whiner.
Since when is advocating rebellion hidden Google appeasement? If we rebel, it's just what Google wants us to do, so whatever you do, DON'T REBEL!Be a good citizen, and that will stop Google in its tracks for sure, yup.
If you want to defeat the walled gardens, explosively expand the public domain. Lots of people are doing that. Google is doing it too, except when they hit roadblocks like ScienceDirect or Taylor & Frances and all the others that I don't use as much.]
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