
Google and the World Brain
1
There is no practical obstacle
whatever now
to the creation of an efficient index
to all human knowledge,
ideas and achievements.
To the creation, that is,
of a complete planetary
memory for all mankind.
He was one of the early inventors
of science fiction.
The idea of time travel,
the possibility of invisibility...
LAUGHTER:
..of intergalactic struggles.
And then, he came up with ideas
of how we might reorganize the
knowledge apparatus of the world,
which he called the World Brain.
For Wells, the World Brain
had to contain
all that was learnt and known
and that was being learnt and known.
If you have access to anything
that's been written,
not just theoretical access,
but like instant access
next to your brain,
that changes your idea
of who you are.
It can be reproduced exactly
and fully in Peru, China, Iceland,
Central Africa or wherever else.
They were frank in their ambition
to execute it.
The Google Books scanning project
is clearly the most ambitious
World Brain scheme
that has ever been invented.
This is no remote dream, no fantasy.
It is a plain statement
of a contemporary state of affairs.
The nightmare scenario,
in 20 years' time,
would be Google tracking
everything we read.
Ever since Wells,
science fiction is always
about the possibility
that people won't really matter
in the future.
And the plot is always
about some heroic person
that either succeeds
or doesn't succeed
in proving that people really matter
after all.
It's a library, a public library,
where people go to look at books,
and read them and take them away.
That girl works at the library
and she checks on books
that are going out
and books that are coming back in.
I love libraries.
I like the smell,
the smell of paper
properly preserved.
It's as if it's the smell
of a hay barn
that's been cleared
of all its animals
and made into a human intelligence.
And in a library, you really...even
if you're sitting in the tearoom,
discussing your latest findings,
it's amazing how much social
interaction with other people
will actually help you
to enrich what you're doing.
'In this part of the library,
'the grown-ups can read
the stories to the children.'
People sometimes say to me,
aren't libraries obsolete?
Um... It's... It's absurd -
they are nerve centres,
centres of intellectual energy.
Libraries stand for an ideal,
which is an educated public.
And to the degree that knowledge
is power,
they also stand there for the idea
that power should be disseminated
and not centralised.
enterprise,
when we saw it, was just digitising
millions and millions of books.
At Harvard, we have, by far,
the greatest university library
in the world.
It's enormous - 17 million volumes.
its holdings digitised
for lots for reasons,
including preservation.
But, beyond that,
it raises the possibility
of sharing your intellectual wealth.
I think of the Harvard Library
as an international asset.
Something that should be opened up
and shared with the general
population.
So here comes Google.
They've got the energy,
they've got the technology,
they've got the money and they said,
"We'll do it for you. Free!"
Google did such a fabulous job
in creating a vision,
not only that a universal digital
library could be created,
but that it could be done today.
like good engineers everywhere,
they just like to think about,
"How do we surmount
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Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
"Google and the World Brain" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 22 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/google_and_the_world_brain_9221>.