thoughtmaybe (Jan 5) - "Google and the World Brain": http://thoughtmaybe.com/google-and-the-world-brain/?lang=en
> In 2002, quietly and behind closed doors, the Internet giant Google began to > scan millions of books in an effort to create a privatised giant global > library, containing every book in existence. Not only this, but they claimed > they had an even greater purpose–to create a higher form of intelligence, > something that HG Wells had predicted in his 1937 essay “World Brain”. > Working with the world’s most prestigious libraries, Google was said to be > reinventing the limits of copyright in the name of free access to anyone, > anywhere. But what can possibly be wrong with this picture? As Google and the > World Brain reveals, a whole lot. Some argue that Google’s actions represent > aggressive theft on an enormous scale, others see it as an attempt to > monopolise our shared cultural heritage, and still others view the project as > an attempt to flatten our minds by consolidating complex ideas into > searchable “extra-long tweets” for the screen. > At first slowly, and then with intensifying conviction, a diverse coalition > of authors and others mobilise to stop the ambitious project. Google and the > World Brain explores this high-stakes story with an important alternative > voice to the technological utopianism of our age. http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2551516/ https://twitter.com/worldbrainfilm Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZkdkobK99A Thanks to Michael Allan for the pointer to thoughtmaybe.com via libtech, https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-August/010908.html HT their email announcement list: http://thoughtmaybe.com/subscribe/ gf P.S. - H.G. Wells' collection of essays and addresses, _World Brain_: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain Including "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia", his "[c]ontribution to the new Encyclopédie Française, August, 1937": https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html > Quietly and sanely this new encyclopaedia will, not so much overcome > these archaic discords, as deprive them, steadily but imperceptibly, > of their present reality. -- Gregory Foster || gfos...@entersection.org @gregoryfoster <> http://entersection.com/ -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
