In Richmond, California, the Physical Archive of the Internet Archive receives books from universities and libraries and, after scanning them, places them in forty-foot shipping containers to save the paper world. Brewster Kahle, the founder of the institute, wants to make sure that if anything happens to the digital world there will still be a record of our time. Kahle points out that, “If the Library of Alexandria had made a copy of every book and sent it to India or China, we’d have the other works of Aristotle, the other plays of Euripides. One copy in one institution is not good enough.” So, Kahle makes it his goal to create an Internet archive, as well as a paper one. Every week more than 20,000 books are received by his non-profit organization. The books are sorted, scanned (in China), and then placed in one of the many shipping containers.
I found this article very interesting because I can see the world of paper disappearing very quickly. Only yesterday I was at a book fair and realized I should not buy any of the books because I could get them for my Kindle. I can feel the world slipping into a new stage of technology. Just a few years ago humans were marveling over the invention of cell phones, and now almost everyone has one. We are in an age where we can post on the Internet where everyone can see, instead of having to make billions of copies on paper to give every person. I think that what Kahle is trying to accomplish is a momentous job, but one that should be done. Someday we might create a new kind of technology that is better than the digital we have today and want to copy over books to it. And wouldn’t it be better to copy the original rather than the digital?
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Good summary and nice commentary. You write clearly and intelligently. I think this transition to a digital age is fascinating because we don't know if what we're doing now will work for us in the future. It would be a shame to lose certain books just because they are not "bestsellers."
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