Books vs. Cyberbooks

I stumbled upon three articles regarding Cyberbooks vs. Actual Books, and since one of my favorite authors is involved, I thought I'd pass along the links.

Scan this Book! - the lengthy article and catalyst of the other two essays - was written by Kevin Kelly for The New York Times Magazine.

Brewster Kahle, an archivist overseeing another scanning project, says that the universal library is now within reach. "This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!" he shouts. "It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon." And unlike the libraries of old, which were restricted to the elite, this library would be truly democratic, offering every book to every person.

John Updike, one of the best writers in the world, responded in his old-school-author way with End of Authorship, also published in The New York Times.

In imagining a huge, virtually infinite wordstream accessed by search engines and populated by teeming, promiscuous word snippets stripped of credited authorship, are we not depriving the written word of its old-fashioned function of, through such inventions as the written alphabet and the printing press, communication from one person to another — of, in short, accountability and intimacy? Yes, there is a ton of information on the Web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile. The electronic marvels that abound around us serve, surprisingly, to inflame what is most informally and noncritically human about us — our computer screens stare back at us with a kind of giant, instant "Aw, shucks," disarming in its modesty, disquieting in its diffidence.

And lastly, Annalee Newitz, assails John Updike's opinion with her keyboard and mouse all in a dither.

Most writers who, like myself, spend their days jabbering online have a tendency to read essays like Updike's as the rantings of an obsolete Luddite who can't tell the difference between a wiki and an RSS feed. It's easy to make fun of the guy for not knowing a whole lot about the technologies he's criticizing. But let's take him seriously for a minute and consider what he's actually getting at beneath his profound misunderstandings of Google Print and bookshelf mash-ups.