The Great Digitalization and the Quest to Know Everything

Lucien X Polastron

Inner Traditions 2009

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

This disturbing book is about what Lucien Polastron calls the “dematerialization of knowledge”. Traditionally, the world’s knowledge is published in book form and held in libraries for access by those who need it. Also traditionally, such knowledge has generally been free for access, apart from copying and shipping costs where necessary. There are alternatives spawned by the computer age, such as Amazon’s system that puts the catalogs of booksellers in a single database where users can search for a wanted title. It is the libraries that concern this book. The costs of maintaining a library is becoming overwhelming, to the point that some libraries are destroying books that are rarely accessed and whose storage is simply too expensive. There are cases where new libraries have been constructed, but by the time space is allocated to ancillary services (cataloging, security, book repair, inter-library loans, etc) there is not enough space to contain the books the library was meant to hold.

Here computers come to the rescue. Many older or less-used texts can be stored in digital format and reprinted as necessary. Amazon and Google Books are leaders in this technology. Publications with smaller circulations find this method ideal (in fact, it’s the method used by this magazine – Synergy can be downloaded as a .pdf file or ordered from www.lulu.com in printed form in your choice of color or black and white). As more texts are digitized, Polastron points out that generally the world’s knowledge will become more accessible. Up to a point.

It is expensive digitizing old books. The cost of labour is high, and although there are “page-turning” machines, their treatment of the books may be less than gentle. Storing the final product will also be expensive as the sheer amount of data increases. Nevertheless, many libraries have signed up with Google to have their libraries or a parts thereof digitized. New books present less of a problem, since they are generally submitted for publication in electronic form anyway. From a distribution company’s point of view the raw material is still very cheap, especially where the books are out of copyright..

“Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements (with the libraries)”

Now we face the problem of cataloging the on-line collections, checking their copyright, and compensating the authors. Should the owners of the original books (the libraries) be compensated as well? This are is already causing legal controversy and Polastron gives a number of examples.

With the costs accumulating, the user of these services is now going to have to pay. It may be in the form of popup advertising or a monthly or yearly access fee. While these fees remain inexpensive this model may work, but sooner or later shareholders are going to see subscriptions as a good profit-making exercise. If the libraries have destroyed their original books due to lack of space, the digital media will now have a monopoly on that knowledge. Is this a good thing?

Finding your information in the new media is not without its problems, either. Users of Google Books will be familiar with its habit of providing you with a few pages before and after the reference you searched for, but it will not give you the same information on the whole book as browsing through a printed copy can. Again, using this magazine as an example, you may find a group of reviews on a particular genre, but may miss the rest of the content of the magazine which could be just as relevant to your work.

A point of interest that Polastron raises is the sheer difficulty of reading an online text. Once you have paid your fee, downloaded the text, and set it up on your computer, you must keep scrolling down On a very large monitor you may be able to do this a page at a time. On a smaller one it may take a couple of clicks or scrolls to read each page. Then you will have to cancel those annoying popup ads that will be a part of your contract with the download provider. Reading a printed copy is easier and more convenient, and this is why Polastron thinks the online model may be less successful than print-on-demand.

If you don’t like the “pay-for-use” model, what alternatives are there? Polastron examines alternatives like Wikipedia and notes that they can be readily rewritten, altered, or politically biased. This may render much of their content useless for serious research, and the qualifications of the writers are not readily available.

A word of warning – Polastron’s writing style is a bit flowery at times, although this may be partly an effect of the translation from French to English. After the first few chapters he settles down a bit, and the bad news emerges more clearly.

Polastron cannot suggest actions to take to correct what may turn out to be a bulk hijacking of the world’s knowledge. He seems to feel that it is going to happen anyway in the face of shrinking budgets and unmanageable quantities of books. He makes an interesting point that puts the whole argument into perspective. Harvard Library estimated the cost of getting a book from the shelves, getting it to the reader, and returning it to the shelves later at around two dollars per loan. Tracking down the book online, printing it, binding it, and GIVING IT AWAY is cheaper when done in library-scale bulk. The future of books and libraries will be interesting.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.3 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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