• by Ryan , September 1, 2009

There’s an internal debate raging inside me: Google’s efforts to digitize the whole of world’s printed texts.

At face value, it seems like it could be a good idea: all of the world’s texts available to anyone, anywhere. And as I originally wrote this post, it consisted largely of praise for e-documents, especially the portability and searchability of e-documents.

On portability: For my thesis, I’m currently reading two volumes of a three volume set of books that discuss nearly every aspect of virtual worlds. They probably weigh 10-12 pounds a piece. Wouldn’t it be great to have these books on my hard drive, or in the cloud somewhere, easily accessible by all?

On searchability: Google has made me virtually addicted to search… first it was just web pages… then I could search images… then I didn’t even have to search my inbox; I could just perform a Google search and find the message I want. And now, as graduate school progresses, and I write, read, and research more and more, I find myself yearning for the ability to simply perform a Google search of a book (mostly when I’m looking for a fact I know to be true and only need a citation).

But when you look beyond the superficial benefits of electronic books and start to think about a for-profit company having that much of the world’s knowledge, it’s a little disconcerting.

It’s not so much the copyright issue that I’m too worried about. Since all of the writing that I’ve done (and am likely to do in the future), is academic in nature and, therefore, not quite geared toward profits, I think my opinion on the digitizing of all texts and putting them out there for all is biased.

If it weren’t for Google being the one in charge of it all, I’d be completely on board. But as much as I love Google’s web services, that’s just too much knowledge (and therefore, power) to be concentrated in the hands of any one person or group, be they for profit or not.

However, I do think it would be neat if publishing companies gave you a free e-copy of the book you buy (kind of like they do with DVDs and digital downloads). It might be a hassle to implement since there are so many different formats (pdf, lit format, Kindle compatible, etc.), but it would be cool to have both the hard copy of a book and a digital version, as well.