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

and dazzling in their ability

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.

Google could basically hold

the whole world hostage.

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.

The first appeal of Google's

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.

And every library wants

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.

The Google engineers are

like good engineers everywhere,

they just like to think about,

"How do we surmount

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