07 June 2007

Google : the library of the World

The library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt was probably the most famous example of a successful storage of a large range of universal scriptures. Founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC during the reign of Pharaoh Ptolemy II, it was partially destroyed by fire on a number of occasions, leading to the irreplaceable loss of many invaluable manuscripts that were establishing and memorising the history of the Antic world.

With a bit of imagination, we could easily figure today a panicked librarian, with his blackened face and half burnt tunic, hurrying out of the flaming building, pressing a ….laptop against his chest (would have such been available at the time!), in a splendid move to save the memory of our past civilisations.

Still, he would only have carried away a minor part of the written treasuries of the old times, as Alexandria, although probably the largest collection of such times, still could not represent more than a minor portion of all the world’s heritage. In addition, his laptop would of course have had a limited memory…And finally, any reconstructed library would still have been again at the only disposal of the happy Diaspora of a few well selected scholars.

Here comes Google, some 2300 years later, a pioneering and most unmatched enterprise to create the ultimate Library of the World, through mastering unsurpassed technologies:

  • Searching, gathering, memorising, organising, and storing all the information that is available on the Blue Planet, representing a mass of data that cover the whole known Universe.
  • Offering it to the largest variety of the inhabitants of the World, thru all six continents, at instant pace.
  • Ascertaining in the same time the due rights for all to protect their own privacies, and deleting at given intervals of time from its huge memory all personal aspects that must not remain there.

Google, here is the memory of the World, intelligent, widely available, fast and efficient, servicing our thirst for knowledge, driving up the boarders of our intelligence.

Pierre de Fermor (With A. de Fermor de Wolkoff).

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