SOAS Library, a jewel amongst libraries
We need public libraries, online libraries, free access to information for all. The current state of the web does not give us this.
There are few monetary incentives to set up proper online public libraries. None whatsoever, in fact. And yet good libraries are a mark of all civilisations. Of course in Britain we assume, for the moment, the right to go to a public library or university library and they form part of a network of libraries and you will find almost any material you need there, much of it out of print. In order to write an essay, for example, you might need to consult many books and periodicals. Periodicals are expensive, and yet most are free of charge. This right is being eroded.
To me, the destruction of the idea of the public library is the most direct example of how market forces and the continuance of civilisation are incompatible.
Other examples would be the abolition of slavery and child labour, rules for traffic, justice for all (not just the highest bidder), universal education education education, universal healthcare. All these reforms, as the economist Ha Joon Chang notes, run directly counter to the principle of the so called 'free' market.
Yes we need a universal global online library and no market forces should not be involved in the loaning of quality literature, of music and films, documents and periodicals to subscribers. It is a matter of preserving and nurturing civilisation - civilisation, something the Huns, Vandals and the City's golden horde oppose tooth and nail. If you want to protest against the banks, wave your library cards at them.
'How is distance education different from face to face education?
To which the answer is simply: 'Distance education is face to face education by other means.'
Let's take this as a corollary to the way a global online library might be made to work. Not following Google or Amazon's slapdash, but still amazingly useful, effort to develop new models. There must be ways we can protect copyright and protect an author's income without abolishing the idea of the public library.
How do we interact across the Internet - across the Apple led, Berners Lee enabled World graphical interface? Well, we behave as if we are typing onto paper. We behave as if we are speaking to people directly. As if we are in the same place as our friends and acquaintances, looking with them at something and commenting on it together. This all happens by analogy and so digital libraries should happen by analogy too. And information, that is knowledge, should be run by librarians and not programmers, technicians and electronic engineers.
If you ask Librarians they will say that they have been sidelined by the geeks. This was the worry at the very inception of the Internet. Before the Internet properly took off in 1995 librarians were the information kings and now they are nothing.
This is a terrible state of affairs, where we sideline the whole profession that we have most need of in the information age, and ignore their expertise. In doing so we praise the finger and not the thing it points to. The computer, the network the search engine. We forget about indexing and referencing and evaluation and classification.
This stupidity and infatuation with electronic toys, and the toys' boys, has meant that most of what you can Google up from the trash pile is unusable and this was the result of choices made by politicians; small minded, small brained and conformist. The trash pile that is most of the Internet is the direct product of the stupidity of politicians. Their abysmal unforgivable stupidity. These elected politicians developed no viable technology strategies for their countries, and sidelined the information specialists in favour of creating Tsunamis of half arsed crap like Wikipedia.
I would liken us to information beggars living on top of a big information rubbish heap, picking out useful bits and bobs from it. Relying on friends and colleagues to shout. 'Over here. I've found something. Relying now on social networks as a filtering and referencing system.
Of course the information professionals have tried to set up WWW II (careful with those Ws) and good luck to them. But they were planning for its imminent arrival in 2000 as far as I remember. And so a global library should be a proper library, but by other means. This is how we should use technology, by extended analogy. The mouse is just a pen; Windows and Mac systems are just paper.
No big deal. We just need the political will to develop a global library.
Greatness comes from people who rise above and who provide solutions to political problems and who don't wash their hands of what happens. Most of our politicians in the west are not serious people taking charge of situations, they are like Pontius Pilate. Our politicians who wash their hands and say:
The children who die of hunger do so because they are victims of laissez faire. This was understood in Victorian times. What is it with our elected leaders that they don't understand the evils of laissez faire? The children's blood is on the hands of politicians abdicating their democratically given responsibility to free trade and the market. The Internet could be the tool for lifting billions into a new age of enlightenment, instead it is mainly a battle field and a playground. Your government and mine allowed this to happen.
It is political action that solves problems, not allowing your policy to be dictated to by the monopolistic corporates demanding 'freedom' of competition and the rule of the market.Let's take the example of the United States: Roosevelt extracted the USA from the deepest poverty because he chose to do so. The Marshall plan got Europe back on its feet as it was designed to do. LBJ fueled the boom in the US economy with his Great Society. t was his intention to do this.
Truly, we have the worst leadership on this planet since the end of World War II. Make a global library. Do it. You can if you want to. Act, you pathetic wee timorous beasties you so called leaders, you, act.
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