{"id":1126,"date":"2010-12-28T10:40:30","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T15:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2011-02-18T12:15:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T17:15:50","slug":"googles-getting-it-all-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2010\/12\/28\/googles-getting-it-all-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Google&#8217;s Getting It All Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like the ancient library at Alexandria, only moreso, Google wants to be the repository of all the world&#8217;s information and, for better or worse, it&#8217;s getting there.<!--more--> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/Four_percent_of_all_the_boo3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1141\" title=\"Four_percent_of_all_the_boo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/Four_percent_of_all_the_boo3-300x155.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"155\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/Four_percent_of_all_the_boo3-300x155.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/Four_percent_of_all_the_boo3.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Comes word that Google has already scanned 15 million books, which represents 12 percent of all the books ever published.<\/p>\n<p>From that mass of knowledge, opinions, history, descriptions and balderdash is emerging a digitalized history of mankind. A team at Harvard University has been analyzing Google&#8217;s knowledge trove and taken to calling it &#8220;culturomics&#8221;. (In case you ever stumble across this term, you&#8217;ll know now where it hails from. Aren&#8217;t they educating anyone at Harvard anymore?)<\/p>\n<p>The Google Books dissectors have issued their first report and it&#8217;s a run-on cultural document. &#8220;Although it barely scratches the surface,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#history\">the Discover blog advises<\/a>, &#8221; it\u2019s already a tantalising glimpse into the power of the Google Books corpus. It\u2019s a record of human culture, spanning six centuries and seven languages. It shows\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#vocabulary\">vocabularies expanding<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#grammar\">grammar evolving<\/a>. It contains stories about our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#history\">adoption of technology<\/a>, our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#fame\">quest for fame<\/a>, and our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#misc\">battle for equality<\/a>. And it hides the traces of tragedy, including traces of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#suppression\">political suppression<\/a>, records of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#misc\">past plagues<\/a>, and a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/16\/the-cultural-genome-google-books-reveals-traces-of-fame-censorship-and-changing-languages\/#history\">fading connection with our own history<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At least the Google library won&#8217;t need a zoning permit, which fortunately will be one less controversy in human history. We still view research and learning as underlining a phrase at a time, coming back to check the underlines and perhaps harvesting a lasting insight from them. But Google&#8217;s books keep flooding in. (And, of course, you can purchase them online.) \u00a0Stack them over there, guys. \u2013 <em>Doug Bedell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like the ancient library at Alexandria, only moreso, Google wants to be the repository of all the world&#8217;s information and, for better or worse, it&#8217;s getting there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}