Google has added a new tool in its quest to convince people that scanning millions of books in university libraries is beneficial and perfectly legal. The company started a blog devoted to the Google Book Search project.
The latest entry highlights the complete works of Shakespeare, all of which can be read in their entirety through Google. “The modern-day printing press brought his plays to people all around the world, unleashing countless performances and sparking astonishing creativity,” the blog item reads. “This summer we’re working to make Shakespeare even more accessible with our website.”
On a “News & Views” page of the blog, Google addresses lawsuits that have been filed seeking to stop it from scanning copyrighted library books. “So why has such a universally useful tool become so controversial? Because some in the publishing community question whether any third party should be able to copy and index copyrighted works so that users can search through them, even if all a user sees is the bibliographic information and a few snippets of text, and even if the result is to make those books widely discoverable online and help the authors and publishers sell more of them.”
As far as we know, the publishing groups opposing Google have not set up similar blogs making their case. A Google search (what else?) does pull up a press release by the Association of American Publishers on the issue:
“While authors and publishers know how useful Google’s search engine can be and think the Print Library could be an excellent resource, the bottom line is that under its current plan Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers.”
9 Responses to Google’s Book Blog
reinking - February 6, 2012 at 9:31 am
I think two ideas are illogically confounded here: (a) presenting complex ideas to those who lack relevant knowledge in a way that is not easily understood, and (b) intellectual brilliance. In fact, it might be argued that the latter is the antithesis of the former. A recent personal example illustrates. Last week I attended a lecture by Adam Riess, who won a 2011 Nobel prize in astrophysics for his discovery that the the universe is not only expanding, but that the expansion is accelerating due to “dark energy.” The complexity of his work and his scientific brilliance were clearly evident. But, even though I have no knowledge of physics (I am in the social sciences), I left his talk convinced that I had a basic conceptual understanding of his work and the science involved. His overheads had many common analogies to illustrate his work and were masterfully designed to communicate his basic ideas to the uninformed. I also thought of two relevant quotes, one by Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” and one by a mentor in graduate school: “Say it so your grandmother can understand it.”
johnbarnes - February 6, 2012 at 11:27 am
What an absolutely delightful description of the great advantage of befuddlement on the edge of one’s own knowledge: it motivates us to go learn that other stuff we should know. It would be a good thing indeed to infect students with that response to fuddle.
johnbarnes - February 6, 2012 at 11:27 am
What an absolutely delightful description of the great advantage of befuddlement on the edge of one’s own knowledge: it motivates us to go learn that other stuff we should know. It would be a good thing indeed to infect students with that response to fuddle.
dank48 - February 6, 2012 at 12:43 pm
This reminds me of the story of the rabbinical student who attended three lectures by a famous rabbi. “The first lecture was good; he was so eloquent that I understood most of what he said. The second was even better, and I hope that with enough study I’ll understand it someday. The third was so profound that even the rabbi didn’t understand what he was saying.”
I’m with Norman Mailer (The Armies of the Night) in that I’ve tried and failed to understand what Chomsky has written, and it’s merely some consolation that it just isn’t my field. I simply don’t know enough about linguistics to grasp what he’s talking about. Still, history is replete with prominent representatives of the old guard in some discipline or other blowing off the young turks, and as has been pointed out, the new way of looking at things sometimes takes hold only after the adherents of the established orthodoxy retire from the field. And that new way either dies or survives, in which cast it in turn matures, ages, and becomes orthodoxy–and is eventually replaced in turn.
Yet each erstwhile “final word on the subject” contributes something to the long-term understanding of the subject.
tjam49 - February 6, 2012 at 5:57 pm
What a concept: Life as a continual learning
process; education and academic pursuits that have no commencement—announcing the
completion of a student’s learning process, and the inauguration of his/her absolute
readiness to be counted among the ranks of the most brilliant minds in his/her
field of study as a peer, with an implied entitlement eliminating even the
slightest obligation or inclination to entertain the thought that any further
knowledge is necessary—but recognize the constancy of change and embrace it as
naturally as the understanding that physical health and well-being require nutritional
intake for growth, maintenance, and survival.
In my
academic experience so far, I have encountered faculty from both camps; oddly
ironic is the evidence of a direct correlation between my learning outcomes and
the level of openness and acceptance of divergent views, and the encouragement
of debate.
And as to your point regarding the understanding
of what you don’t understand, I believe there is within a mind that is fertile
soil, the potential to grasp the intrinsic meaning of a concept, even though
the linguistic expression of the concept is beyond your intellectual
capabilities at the time. I have experienced this phenomenon in lectures where
I felt totally lost; yet, at an instant during the talk—what I refer to as the
point at which space and time intersected—I was able to see in my mind a
representation of this concept, and from that image work my way back through
the intellectual process to a clear understanding of the relationship of the
word meanings of the original linguistic expression. If that makes sense to you,
then you have more than likely been there as well.
Type your comment here.
tjam49 - February 6, 2012 at 5:58 pm
What a concept: Life as a continual learning
process; education and academic pursuits that have no commencement—announcing the
completion of a student’s learning process, and the inauguration of his/her absolute
readiness to be counted among the ranks of the most brilliant minds in his/her
field of study as a peer, with an implied entitlement eliminating even the
slightest obligation or inclination to entertain the thought that any further
knowledge is necessary—but recognize the constancy of change and embrace it as
naturally as the understanding that physical health and well-being require nutritional
intake for growth, maintenance, and survival.
In my academic experience so far, I have encountered faculty from both camps; oddly
ironic is the evidence of a direct correlation between my learning outcomes and
the level of openness and acceptance of divergent views, and the encouragement
of debate.
And as to your point regarding the understanding
of what you don’t understand, I believe there is within a mind that is fertile
soil, the potential to grasp the intrinsic meaning of a concept, even though
the linguistic expression of the concept is beyond your intellectual
capabilities at the time. I have experienced this phenomenon in lectures where
I felt totally lost; yet, at an instant during the talk—what I refer to as the
point at which space and time intersected—I was able to see in my mind a
representation of this concept, and from that image work my way back through
the intellectual process to a clear understanding of the relationship of the
word meanings of the original linguistic expression. If that makes sense to you,
then you have more than likely been there as well.
Guest - February 6, 2012 at 7:21 pm
GP: >You ought to find your university buzzing with ideas that seem intriguing but not (yet) quite within your grasp.>>
Certainly that is true for anyone still capable of learning; on the other hand, anyone who suffered through the worst of the pomo crit theory period in an American English department must beg forgiveness for not granting the presumption of intelligibility to whirling gibberish.
While academic success is measured by your output (what you publish) rather than by your input (what you learn), people “trained” (odd word) in the humanities will participate less and less in the important academic discourse. The number of individuals able to keep pace with the blooming, buzzing cauldron of new ideas in linguistics is (I submit without proof) diminishing by the decade.Since “English” is still the default source of common knowledge across disciplines, this (unsubstantiated) widening gap between the intellectual haves and have nots bodes ill for the future of higher education. imho
Ben Hemmens - February 9, 2012 at 7:06 am
I enjoyed the article about the Chomsky talk. Particularly the grant to Željko Bošković “On the Traditional Noun Phrase: Comparing Languages With and Without Articles”. This gave me and my wife a good laugh. We live in Central Europe and both have ELT experience, mostly with German speakers but with a scattering of people from the neighbouring slavic-language countries. Their innocent bafflement about what to use articles for is often touching, and it’s nice to see that one intrepid character is determined to get to the bottom of the matter ;-)
jffoster - February 10, 2012 at 9:35 am
I too will be interested in the results of the ‘With and without Articles’. Perhaps it will help me understand why prescriptivists in the Ukraine (yes, the Ukraine {or Ukrainia } who don’t have a definite article in their language insist on telling English speakers when we should use and not use ours.