How about this bit of news from Radio National’s pm page on the web ( radio national PM ) :
18:44:00 21/06/2011
Thousands of British Library texts to be digitised
The British Library has announced an historic deal with internet giant Google to digitize 250,000 works from its
collection spanning the period 1700 to 1870. They will be available for free and every word of the texts will become
searchable.
How about that? Isn’t that one of the most wonderful gifts that human race has ever received?
And how much notice does it get in the media? How much does the world care about it?
Peals before swine, mate.
Google is doing what amounts to incredible things for us. Incredible technologically. Incredible sociologically.
They are making the world.
And what does the world care about it?
Look at the list of ‘news’ items Yahoo puts on its Yahoo Mail login screen and you’ll see what is probably a fair representation of the obsessions, the concerns, the values, the current interests, of ‘the world’, our world at least.
They’re always there. A list of five and if you want more another five which is an earlier five, the list constantly having new items added to it.
Here’s the current top five:
1. Cop guilty of child sex crimes
2. Virgin passengers sent foul message
3. Surgeon hangs himself over botched surgery
4. When does a woman become a man?
5. Are pippa and harry an item?
There you go. That’s our world.
Presented with riches, prefer…. the dross…