Just som en illustration till den "andens stafettlöpning" som jag skrev om i går ( "Andens stafettlöpning": att klottra i böcker) kommer här länken till Kevin Kellys artikel i NY Times idag om det universiella biblioteket. (Och - som ännu en illustration - jag hittade den inte själv, utan fick den av Nils - tack!)

"Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages.

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs have written and cross-referenced an entire online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Buoyed by this success, many nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans.

In addition to a link, which explicitly connects one word or sentence or book to another, readers will also be able to add tags, a recent innovation on the Web but already a popular one. A tag is a public annotation, like a keyword or category name, that is hung on a file, page, picture or song, enabling anyone to search for that file. (...)

The link and the tag may be two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years."
Kevin Kelly: Scan This Book! (New York Times, 14 maj 2006)

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