19.017 what the Internet is doing to scholarship

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 17.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
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         Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 06:48:51 +0100
         From: "Donald Weinshank" <weinshan_at_cse.msu.edu>
         Subject: FW: Scenes from the Internet revolution in scholarship:

   Willard: Humanists may be interested in this essay in THE NEW REPUBLIC.

WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO SCHOLARSHIP.
The Bookless Future
by David A. Bell

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050502&s=bell050205

The entire essay is on-line.

I do have two disagreements with the author.

1. Only those items in which people are willing to invest the necessary time
and money will be found by a search engine. The rest, in good Orwellian
fashion, "go down the memory hole." These perforce include documents
currently under copyright but for which no pay-for-use arrangement is
possible.

2. Changing technologies may make the postings unreadable within a few
decades. As a critic once wrote, "Every day, we burn the Library of
Alexandria." I had my own experiences with this when I could not read files
written in WordMarc, a word processor much beloved -- for a few years -- in
Engineering.

          _________________________________________________
          Dr. Don Weinshank Professor Emeritus Comp. Sci. & Eng.
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Received on Thu May 12 2005 - 02:04:53 EDT