Google Giving Up ANYTHING for Book Deal to Get eBooks

Thousands of aspiring authors from around the world can now totally sympathize with Google—because the search giant is also struggling to get a book deal. Well, okay, so mostly they’re struggling to get regulatory approval of a book deal, and said book deal is more about licensing and ePub than actually breaking into the industry—but close enough, right?

Anyway, Google looks like they’re getting to the point where they’re willing to give up just about anything to get this book deal through the EU. The latest concession is to allow two non-US members onto a board to administer its digital books settlement. Bloomberg also reports that:

Books that are commercially available and under copyright in Europe won’t be considered out of print under a proposed settlement with U.S. publishers over the company’s book-scanning project, Google said in a letter to several publisher associations in Europe.

The deal is supposed to pertain to works that are out of print (but still in copyright) as well as public domain works. The European Commission “is seeking precise details on the exact scope of the settlement” and “how many European works or publications will potentially be affected.”

Coming up on eleven months after the agreement was first announced, Google is still facing widespread regulatory scrutiny, as well as some protests from author groups, Amazon (via the Open Book Alliance) and others.

However, Google continues to pursue the deal (even in the face of the DOJ in the US). I think this is more than just Google not wanting to back down from their deal—I think this is a sign of just how serious Google is about their pending eBook foray.

They already have deals with Sony and Interead, and either of those deals could also lead in to the hardware side of eBook readers. Now they need the content to back up those deals and really make a push to take on Amazon.

If they get the necessary permissions for the nearly 500,000 books they’re proposing, Google could stand to take on Amazon—but Amazon would still have an advantage in current bestsellers.

What do you think? Can old books from Google match up to Amazon? Just how much will Google concede to get the deal through?

Jordan McCollum

Sony&Google for ebooks

Sony, together with Google, on Wednesday announced it is providing access to more than 1 million free public domain books in its eBook Store, including classic novels, biographies, historical texts, romance novels and more.

The titles, which Google has digitized as part of its Google Books project, are available in EPUB format and naturally work with the $280 Sony PRS-505 or the $350 PRS-700 Reader.

The PRS-500 does not work with the Google offering.

The process involves downloading software, signing up for an account and loading the e-books on your compatible device. For now, it’s available only to U.S.-based readers (probably due to licensing agreements and copyright issues across borders).
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor


Bookmark this on Delicious

New Internet

Via The Independent in the UK, a report that's high on hyperventilation but still interesting: An invention that could change the internet for ever. Excerpt:

The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers. Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet.

Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.

Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."
Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer.
Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

Well, I've signed up for their email newsletter. We'll see what develops.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor


Bookmark this on Delicious

Sony et Google Books

Google Books compatible avec le livre électronique de Sony

Le Reader de Sony. Le géant nippon va proposer aux utilisateurs de son livre électronique les ouvrages tombés dans le domaine public qui ont été numérisés par Google afin d'accroître l'offre de son catalogue. /Photo d'archives/REUTERS/Alex Grimm

Vos outils
Imprimez Réagissez Classez

Sur le même sujet
Amazon Kindle 2, le livre électronique qui raconte les histoires
Amazon et Google parient sur le e-book
Livres en ligne Shakespeare en ligne sur ton portable
Livres La guerre du feuilletage
Les livres électroniques d'Amazon disponibles pour iPhone et iPod Touch
Sony va proposer aux utilisateurs de son livre électronique les ouvrages tombés dans le domaine public qui ont été numérisés par Google afin d'accroître l'offre de son catalogue.

Les ouvrages en question sont accessibles via le service Google Books sur le site internet http://www.books.google.com.

Le géant nippon de l'électronique a précisé mercredi que plus d'un demi-million d'ouvrages serait mis gratuitement à la disposition des utilisateurs de son Reader, un appareil portable permettant de lire des livres et des journaux.

Cela va permettre de porter le catalogue des titres disponibles sur l'eBook Store à plus de 600.000, a ajouté Sony.

Le groupe nippon qui propose deux versions du Reader est en concurrence avec Amazon sur le marché du livre électronique. Le Kindle, l'appareil du numéro un mondial du commerce en ligne, offre à ses utilisateurs quelque 245.000 titres de journaux, de magazines et de blogs.

Les utilisateurs du Reader pourront lire directement sur leur appareil les livres numérisés par Google ou les télécharger comme un fichier PDF pour les lire sur un ordinateur.

Alexandria Sage, version française Claude Chendjou
Retrouvez ce post traité par huit algorithmes différents dans La Métabole

Rejoignez le Journal de l'Hypertexte en anglais (posts du jour différents de ceux ici présents) -
Connectez-vous sur hypertextual.net l'Hypertexte Principal de la Solution -

Diffusion du flux



Hypertextopia l'Hypertexte

Tous les eBooks accessibles sur Phonereader.GoogleBooks

Entrez dans la Bibliothèque pour readers mobiles de Phonereader.eu
Jean-Philippe Pastor

Harvard library reconsiders its stance with Google

Google has scanned more than 7 million books for the Google Book Search, and will likely scan millions of other titles in the future.

The service is especially useful for any book titles that are now out-of-print, with all public domain books available to download as PDFs for free. Even though the Harvard library is an original supporter of the project, it seems the $125 million monetary agreement Google reached with book publishers leaves the library frustrated.

The Harvard university let Google scan books that are out of print and no longer copyrighted, but has been hesitant to give the Mountain View, CA-based company full access to its library.The U.S. District Court in New York must finalize the settlement, and university officials said they would reconsider their stance if the court chooses to change the financial agreement for more "reasonable terms," school officials said.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Pageranking

To fully understand pagerank and how it can be channeled or sculpted, we need to add one additional concept: pagerank transference.

The idea is that if you have a page with lots of pagerank that points to lots of other pages (let's say 20) each link gets 1/20th the pagerank of the originating page. If the page has a pagerank of 100, each link would get a transferred pagerank "vote" of 100/20, or 5. If that same page had only two outbound links however, then each link would get 100/2 or 50 points.

Clearly, the more outbound links you have on a page, the less benefit each resultant destination page sees as the originating page gains in popularity. This is a bit confusing, but think about it this way: If we have a Web page with 20 outbound links (e.g., links pointing to other pages, either on our own site or another site) and our pagerank jumps from 100 to 200, each of those destination pages gains an additional vote of 5. Not so much. If we only have two outbound links, however, each sees a jump of 50 as our own page gains in pagerank!

The obvious question is whether you can control the flow of pagerank so that you can have outbound links that don't get any votes?

You can. That's what's called the "nofollow" attribute and to see how it works we need to briefly sidetrack and talk about HTML. A hypertext link on a Web page has two elements: the destination URL and the text that's to be shown as clickable. It looks like this:
"a href="http://www.google.com/visit scenic Google.com (surrounded by carets) and ending with a "/a" (also bracketed by carets)

In this instance, "http://www.google.com//" is the target address where you'll be taken if you click on the words "visit scenicGoogle". You already know this if you're learning HTML, I'm sure.
To have a hypertext link not pass along pagerank, the secret is to add the nofollow attribute, actually a value to the "rel" (short for 'relationship') attribute. It ends up looking like this:
(open caret) a href="http://www.google.com//" rel="nofollow(end caret) visit scenic Google.com (start caret) /a (end caret).

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Google Knol is now live

Google Knol is now live.

It's like Wikipedia, only written by experts and pwned by Google. Check it out!

Also, I happened upon Everything2, this other weird & interesting hypertext community where anything goes, not modeled on an encyclopedia.

Not necessarily by experts, as I'll be writing a few, but there will be known authorship. It's more a moderated version of Wikipedia. For instance you'll always have nutters who think Buffy is better than Sabrina, but now they won't be able to vandalise the article with sentences like "Buffy shows more more character development in a world where goals are earned rather than the simplistic wish-fulfillment of Sabrina" because I'll have to approve them before they get added to the knol.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Of course if you do disagree, then you'll be able to make your own entirely separate Buffy knol, which would be a blow if a special interest group wanted to police an entry.

My little SEO

It seems like everyone is practising a little search-engine optimisation (SEO) these days. While you might have the basics covered, do you know where SEO is heading? I’ve been optimising websites for search engines since the late 1990s and this has given me the fortunate opportunity to witness the evolution of search-engine algorithms over the years. Based on this experience, this article attempts to offer some insight on where SEO is moving.

The evolution of SEO has been an interesting one. The term was first coined in 1997, but the intentions behind it have been practised since the early days of web search; one could argue as far back as Jumpstation or even Archie in the early 1990s.

SEO is defined by Wikipedia as: “The process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via ‘natural’ (’organic’ or ‘algorithmic[SB1]’) search results for targeted keywords.” When performed successfully, SEO can tap into the tremendous number of searches performed on a daily basis and deliver a considerable stream of traffic and revenue to a website owner.

It is this potential for huge reward that has meant that search engines have had to grow smarter over the years. The early search engines were so primitive that the first phase in the life of SEO began with on-page optimisation. Quite simply, webmasters could tweak the content and various elements of their web pages or documents and, in doing so, be relatively confident of ranking well on their chosen keywords and phrases. I say words and phrases because 15 years ago, one-word searches were commonplace. These days, as users have evolved, the average query length tends to be up to three or four words. (...)

Rob Stokes is the founder and Group CEO of Quirk eMarketing,

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Google at the top

In the space of a year, Google supplants Microsoft as No. 1 in a survey of the level of trust American consumers have in various companies, while Microsoft drops to No. 10. Another triumph for the Windows Vista operating system.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

What is revelancy?

Google=Stupid? Published June 12, 2008

Johnson Direct , Measurable Marketing , Media , Observing the World Around Us Tags: Advertising copy length, Attention Span Deficits, Google, Information Overload, Media Impressions

Ever since I officially began my professional measurable marketing career back in 1988, one argument has persisted: long copy vs. short copy. “People will never read that. It’s too long. People are too busy to read all that” Clients almost always want to shorten the copy. Rarely, if ever, have I heard, “Can you make this longer?”

The best answer to the question on copy length came to me at a seminar I attended: “People don’t read long copy or short copy. They read what interests them.” That’s why relevancy is even more important today then it was in 1988. People have information overload and, because of Google, perhaps, people have shorter attention spans. That was the theory I came across at a recent Wall Street Journal Blog entitled: “Is Google making us stupid?”

Maybe 1 out of 100 tests I have conducted have proved that shorter copy wins, but as readers of this blog know, you should always test to lift results. The web has added a new dimension, as you can drive them to a site with shorter copy and have virtually no limits on copy length once they click your desired URL.

As for email, it seems to me that the long form email format does a better, more complete job of selling, yet clients still want copy short, especially because it’s email. And, as such, may be short changing their ROI.
I’d love to hear your results…

Grant A. Johnson
Johnson Direct LLC
1-800-710-2750

Pond-skater minds with Google

Andrew Sullivan

Here’s something : Friedrich Nietzsche used a typewriter. Many of those terse aphorisms and impenetrable reveries were banged out on an 1882 Malling-Hansen Writing Ball. And a friend of his at the time noticed a change in the German philosopher’s style as soon as he moved from longhand to type.

“Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote. Nietzsche replied: “You are right. Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

Gulp. The technology writer Nicholas Carr, who pointed out this item of Nietzsche trivia in the new issue of The Atlantic, proceeded to make a more disturbing point. If a typewriter could do this to a mind as profound and powerful as Nietzsche’s, what on earth is Google now doing to us?
Are we fast losing the capacity to think deeply, calmly and seriously? Have we all succumbed to internet attention-deficit disorder? Or, to put it more directly: if you’re looking at a monitor right now, are you still reading this, or are you about to click on another link?

The astonishing benefits of Google are barely worth repeating. When I started to contribute this column, I used to keep a month’s worth of The New York Times stacked in my study. If I recalled an article or a report that I wanted to refer to, I’d spend a happy few minutes wrestling with frayed and yellowing paper, smudging myself with ink, and usually ended up reading an article that had nothing to do with my search.

I needed a good memory – even visually – to track my vague recollection down. I needed time. I needed to think a little before I began my research. Now all I do is right-click and type a few words. And all is instantly revealed.

I spend most of my day blogging – at a current rate of about 300 posts a week. I’m certainly not more stupid than I used to be; and I’m much, much better and more instantly informed.
However, the way in which I now think and write has subtly – or not so subtly – altered. I process information far more rapidly and seem able to absorb multiple sources of information simultaneously in ways that would have shocked my teenage self.

In researching a topic, or just browsing through the blogosphere, the mind leaps and jumps and vaults from one source to another. The mental multitasking – a factoid here, a YouTube there, a link over there, an e-mail, an instant message, a new PDF – is both mind-boggling when you look at it from a distance and yet perfectly natural when you’re in mid-blog.

When it comes to sitting down and actually reading a multiple-page print-out, or even, God help us, a book, however, my mind seizes for a moment. After a paragraph, I’m ready for a new link. But the prose in front of my nose stretches on.
I get antsy. I skim the footnotes for the quick info high that I’m used to. No good. I scan the acknowledgments, hoping for a name I recognise. I start again.
A few paragraphs later, I reach for the laptop. It’s not that I cannot find the time for real reading, for a leisurely absorption of argument or narrative. It’s more that my mind has been conditioned to resist it.

Is this a new way of thinking? And will it affect the way we read and write? If blogging is corrosive, the same could be said for Grand Theft Auto, texting and Facebook messaging, on which a younger generation is currently being reared. But the answer is surely yes – and in ways we do not yet fully understand. What we may be losing is quietness and depth in our literary and intellectual and spiritual lives.
The playwright Richard Foreman, cited by Carr, eulogised a culture he once felt at home in thus: “I come from a tradition of western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality – a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West.
“[Now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available’.”
The experience of reading only one good book for a while, and allowing its themes to resonate in the mind, is what we risk losing. When I was younger I would carry a single book around with me for days, letting its ideas splash around in my head, not forming an instant judgment (for or against) but allowing the book to sit for a while, as the rest of the world had its say – the countryside or pavement, the crowd or train carriage, the armchair or lunch counter. Sometimes, human beings need time to think things through, to allow themselves to entertain a thought before committing to it.

The white noise of the ever-faster information highway may, one fears, be preventing this. The still, small voice of calm that refreshes a civilisation may be in the process of being snuffed out by myriad distractions.
I don’t want to be fatalistic here. As Carr points out, previous innovations – writing itself, printing, radio, televi-sion – have all shifted the tone of our civilisation without destroying it. And the capacity of the web to retrieve the old and ancient and make them new and accessible again is a small miracle.

Right now, we may be maximally overwhelmed by all this accessible information – but the time may come when our mastery of the new world allows us to gain more perspective on it.
Here’s hoping. Shallowness, after all, does not necessarily preclude depth. We just have to find a new equilibrium between the two. We need to be both pond-skaters and scuba divers. We need to master the ability to access facts while reserving time and space to do something meaningful with them.

It is inevitable this will take our always-evolving species and ever-malleable brains a little time – and the Google era in a mass form is not even a decade old.
Some have suggested a web sabbath – a day or two in the week when we force ourselves not to read e-mails or post blogs or text messages; a break in order to think in the old way again: to look at human faces in the flesh rather than on a Facebook profile, to read a book rather than a blog, to pray rather than browse.

I think I’ll start with Nietzsche at some point. But right now I have a blog to fill.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

Is Google making us stupid?

Idea Watch: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Posted by Tom Weber

Ever worry that all that time you spend on the Web might be rewiring your brain? In the July/August issue of the Atlantic magazine, writer Nicholas Carr confesses to that fear–and explores this question: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

In a nutshell, Mr. Carr’s argument is this: Spending so much time reading on the Web is training us to accept information in small bites, and that’s worrisome. He writes:
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy … That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
Of course, the notion that the surf-happy world of the Web is affecting our attention span isn’t new. Even before the rise of the Web, other types of media–such as music videos–were being blamed for the same thing. But Buzzwatch suspects many readers will see something of themselves in the article’s description of people cramming ever-more bits of information into every last moment online.

Writes Mr. Carr:
If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.
Readers, do you feel that spending time on the Web is rewiring your brain? And if yes, do you care?

Permalink Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/06/10/idea-watch-is-google-making-us-stupid/trackback/

Save & Share:
wsj:http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/06/10/idea-watch-is-google-making-us-stupid/
Yahoo! Buzz Share on Facebook Del.icio.us Ever worry that all that time you spend on the Web might be rewiring your brain? In the July/August issue of the Atlantic magazine, writer Nicholas Carr confesses to that fear–and explores this question: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
In a nutshell, Mr. Carr’s argument is this: Spending so much time reading on the Web is […]
--> Digg this Email This

Read more: Memes, Search, Idea Watch

Comments
I don’t know — what was the question again? My attention drifted off before the end of the post . . .
Comment by Independent Girl - June 10, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I did have a comment on this article but I’ve moved on in the past couple of minutes.
Comment by Common Sense - June 10, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Susan Jacoby, former Washington Post reporter and author of The Age Of American Unreason, talked about this back in February.

“A Nation Of Idiots?”http://www.boom2bust.com/2008/02/19/a-nation-of-idiots/
Comment by Boom2Bust.com - June 10, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I’ve found I’m just as able to immerse myself in some books and articles, but less so for other books and articles. Generally, the ones I’m able to immerse myself in are those that are good, and those I’m not able to immerse myself in are those that are mediocre or bad. If there is a crowding-out effect, it’ll be on bad books, and I don’t really have a problem with that.
Comment by Bob's My Uncle - June 10, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Why is this blog so slow?
Comment by Nevermore - June 10, 2008 at 2:21 pm
The same effect has been proven with television and kids, so it makes sense. Too many changes (commercials), too much content.
Comment by Sorry...wasn't paying attention... - June 10, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Its easy to see Mr. Carr has been Googling way too much
Comment by 823077 - June 10, 2008 at 3:37 pm
i definitely agree with this and have felt it much more difficult to read an “e-book” than a real book… If I print the book out then I’m fine…
Comment by boner to boner - June 10, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I’m an old guy. I am so much better informed now then in pre-google. And, because of these vast information tools I now am able to accomplish life’s tasks better and quicker. I now have time to appreciate a good read, nature, art and travel. I am in my best of times. And, not dumber but smarter I should think. Appreciate the gains you can expect from these tools in the future. Lucky you.
Comment by mark - June 11, 2008 at 8:34 pm
stupid google
Comment by s - June 11, 2008 at 8:58 pm
i shall perform a google search to find the answer to this question
Comment by e$ - June 12, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Trackbacks
[…] our look earlier today at concerns that the Web may be rewiring our brains for short attention spans, Buzzwatch thought it appropriate to highlight this video making the […]
Trackback by Buzzwatch : Daily Diversion: The Democratic Primary--For Short Attention Spans - June 10, 2008 at 4:51 pm
[…] The best answer to the question on copy length came to me at a seminar I attended: “People don’t read long copy or short copy. They read what interests them.” That’s why relevancy is even more important today then it was in 1988. People have information overload and, because of Google, perhaps, people have shorter attention spans. That was the theory I came across at a recent Wall Street Journal Blog entitled: “Is Google making us stupid?” […]
Trackback by Google=Stupid? « Marketing That’s Measurable - June 12, 2008 at 1:38 am

Google's effect on our mind

In the debate over Google’s effect on humanity, everyone is missing one big issue
Posted on June 19, 2008 by Douglas Bell

Yes, again: The cover story that launched a thousand blog posts.
For the second time this week, I’m taking my lead from The Atlantic (it’s the best magazine in the world right now, making even The New Yorker appear precious and overwrought). Unsurprisingly, the two articles that stirred me to blog were both (a) about the Web and (b) rife with fundamental, flummoxing misperception. I’ve already written about Mark Bowden’s piece on the Web-induced demise of The Wall Street Journal. Now for the big kahuna: Nicholas Carr’s take on Google. Titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” this cover story has been sticking in bloggers’ craws all week, inspiring them to pee on hydrants to mark their view on the current state of media, the Web and the human condition. Carr’s view is clear: the hypertext world of Google is slowly eroding our capacity for sustained contemplation, thereby flattening our collective intelligence. One thing is also clear: the piece has an enormous blind spot.

Some agree with Carr, of course:
Is this a new way of thinking? And will it affect the way we read and write? If blogging is corrosive, the same could be said for Grand Theft Auto, texting and Facebook messaging, on which a younger generation is currently being reared. But the answer is surely yes—and in ways we do not yet fully understand. What we may be losing is quietness and depth in our literary and intellectual and spiritual lives. —Andrew Sullivan in The Times of London

Some disagree:
Maybe the reason why Nick and so many other literati are losing their patience with long form information is that it is so fundamentally inefficient and inferior to connected bits of information.
You look at a book, read a book, and you easily perceive a coherent whole. You look at all the information on that book’s topic on the Web, all connected, and you can’t see the sum of the parts—but we are starting to get our minds around it. We can’t yet recognize the superiority of this networked thinking process because we’re measuring it against our old linear thought process.
Nick romanticizes the “contemplation” that comes with reading a book. But it’s possible that the output of our old contemplation can now be had in larger measure through a new entirely non-linear process.—Scott Karp at seekingalpha.com

But here’s what both sides in the debate missed: Google’s motivation in all this is money. For all their drivel about corporate responsibility (Google’s motto is the impossibly pretentious “Don’t be evil”), Google “monetizes” (lovely word that) what Karp calls “networked thinking” by charging fractions of whatever currency to place links nearer to the front page of a given search.
And guess what? Google couldn’t care less whether this new form of thought is our salvation or our damnation. In business speak, they’re “content agnostic.” The debate about which is the better mode of rumination for optimal human development—algorithmic/hypertext or monastic/contemplative—is nothing but a sideshow.

So long as the dollar calls the tune at Google, it seems to me that how we read—Carr’s po-faced lament notwithstanding—is somewhat less problematic than whether what we read is the straight goods or just another ad campaign done up in digital drag.

• Is Google Making Us Stupid? [The Atlantic]• Idea Watch: Is Google Making Us Stupid? [Wall Street Journal]• Google is giving us pond-skater minds [The Times]• Connecting the Dots of the Internet Revolution [Seeking Alpha]• How Google ate my brain [Globe and Mail]
Back to Spectator Home
Categories: General, Internet, Over the Border, Magazines
Permalink

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -