May The Source Be With You. . . .

May The Source Be With You. . . .


What I mean by this is that the idea[l] of Project Gutenberg
is to bring the source of all information, and civilization,
to the masses in the same way The Gutenberg Press did in the
middle of The Second Millennium, only in a modern manner.

As our civilization starts off into The Third Millennium the
average person should be able to get to online computers for
the purpose of acquiring knowledge from a million books by a
time when The Third Millennium is only 1% on its way, and by
the time 2% is completed should have access to 10 million of
these books in translation into 100 languages or more.

These predictions have been part of my goals for the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive since its inception, but only now
is there any likelihood that persons will seriously consider
such predictions. . .they were just too much in the past.

However, with the advent of 1/2 terabyte drives for $200 and
the consequent ability to add a terabyte to your computer on
a budget, the possibilities of such Project Gutenberg goals,
and more, are becoming so much the stuff of reality that the
naysayers have little to count on, other than being labeled,
"The nattering nabobs of negativity," to cash in a phrase of
some previous political significance.

Today there is no reason the average person can't have whole
libraries of books residing inside their own person computer
as their own person library, only a library much larger than
the average public library, which carries ~30,000 books--but
also contains many other things than books.  There isn't any
reason these personal libraries cannot contain artworks by a
thousand artists or sculptors, music by a thousand composers
and a wide variety of others.

You are nearly all familiar with iPods, but most of us would
not realize that an iPod could easily contain more music for
our potential listening than most of us have time for.  It's
nothing for millions of people to log over 10,000 items into
their iPods. . .listening to one each 60 minutes, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, 365 day a year would still not quite let
you each of the items one time.

10,000/365 = 27.4

Most of us also don't realize, even though programs to let a
person read eBook on iPods were available when iPods were on
the market only a week, that you could just as easily put an
electronic library of eBooks on you iPod as a music library.
In fact, there is no reason you can't mix the two, and, with
the new video iPods, also include the above art library.

But I don't want these people to just have such materials as
an audience, I want them to have them as a source of the new
materials of the future.

I want anyone who wants to make a new edition of any classic
book to find that 99% of what they need to create such a new
edition is right there for the taking and that all they have
to do is the "real" work. . .right between the ears, and the
heart. . .let's not forget the heart.

Our educational system is rampant with "Trivial Pursuit" and
the like, as opposed to real thought provoking events.

In fact, "thought provoking" is likely to become one of such
words as have become "politically incorrect," and we will be
teaching the next generations of students never to say words
that could be construed as "thought provoking."

What possible good could come from provoking thought?

What I would like to do is to free our people from the waste
of the "Trivial Pursuit" aspects of education, just as freed
they were from the multiplications tables, that turned minds
into memory banks of totals and sub-totals, instead of minds
that were actual calculators that could figure out problems,
rather than recite their solutions from memory.  Look up the
words "computer" and "calculator" in the OED or many classic
dictionaries for definitions of people who can work numbers,
though I should warn you that the more modern definitions in
use tilt a bias more towards the MBA mentality, which is not
the same thing at all.

I remember teachers and professors of the ilk who, when they
were asked a question such as, "When Hamlet talks about `the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,' is it the kinds of
slings used back in the day of David and Goliath?" and would
grab their huge weighty tome of Shakespeare's collected work
and casually flip through the pages until Hamlet's soliloquy
was in front of them, and then, after quoting a few lines be
suggesting a possible "research paper" for the student, when
they should have been answering a simple "yes or no" query.

The truth is the most teachers probably never considered the
question of whether Hamlet meant something like the sling of
David as mentioned in the Bible, and thus should not be able
to give a decent answer. . .thus some hiding behind "Trivial
Pursuit" of the quotation which proves they know Shakespeare
. . .but doesn't prove they ever provoked any thoughts about
what what Shakespeare was actually saying.

What I want is for the students to be able to whip out their
PDAs, PPCs, iPods, or whatever, and beat those professors to
the quotations, thus keeping the conversation on track of an
answer to a simple question, rather than let some professors
take them off on a wild goose chase, all the long way around
Robin Hood's barn.

;-)

When I say, "May The Source Be With You," I mean that I want
to give that source material to everyone, thus freeing them,
I hope, from the drudgery of the "Trivial Pursuit" aspect of
the old-fashioned educational system, to be able to ask such
questions of their professors without such professors having
the possibility of palming off such questions as above.

The same goes for the "treasure hunts" through libraries and
other sources, a la Professor Kingsfield, in a movie called,
"The Paper Chase," in which the students are chasing papers,
in more ways than one, as you will find out if you look.

*

While on the subject of movies, I would like to recommend an
Ealing Alec Guiness classic, "The Man in the White Suit," as
my favorite movie of all time for the left brain, and than a
right brain classic from the same period, "The Red Shoes."

"The Red Shoes" is/was also available in the great paperback
written by the same two who made the movie.

I suppose I should also add the 1954 version "20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea."

As far as books go, "Dandelion Wine," by Ray Bradbury is the
right brain favorite, with "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand for
the left brain.  "Atlas Shrugged" is 1,000 pages which might
be too much for most people to start with, so you might want
to start with "Anthem," which is a Project Gutenberg eBook.

If you are totally serious about reading Rand, you might see
yourself clear to reading "The Fountainhead" before "Atlas,"
as you will probably get more out of both that way, but I am
inclined to warn you that the first 120 pages go slowly.

*

The upshot of this commentary is that Project Gutenberg goal
orientation is not so much to bring finished product to some
billions of people, but rather to bring the source materials
with which they can build new products, including themselves
via the opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps,
without dependence on any particular institutions, libraries
or schools, but with direct access and control.

*Should I leave this next part out???!!!

It is not that I want to eliminate libraries and/or schools,
I love them more than you might imagine, but I value what is
the substantive materials out of which libraries and schools
are built even more than libraries and schools themselves.

I also value the words in the books more than the books as a
material object. . .I find it difficult to understand voices
that tell me how much fondness they have for the look and/or
feel of paper books. . .I feel they have somehow caught this
secondary fondness for the "form" rather than the "content."
For me it is all about the content. . .I literally could not
tell you what the pages of the books I read look like unless
I was studying them for class, because then I remember where
the words were on the pages so I can find them again. . .but
rather I see past the words to a vision, a literal vision of
the story behind the words.  For this reason I cannot listen
to audio books while driving, it would be too dangerous.

But what I value most is the hearts and minds of the authors
who have spent major portions of their lives to tell me what
was inside them, to tell me of their own perceptions and the
thoughts and feelings that reside in them.

Books are one of the ultimate forms of communication for us,
and we can receive the thoughts of people who lived hundreds
or thousands of years and miles away, very much like Colonel
Freeleigh as a time machine in "Dandelion Wine."

If the only effect of my career is that the literacy rate is
improved by 10%, that people read 10% more, are educated 10%
better, and all that comes with that, I will say that I have
been a success, but I have hopes for much more than that.

I hope that eBooks create the same kind of change as did The
Gutenberg Press, providing us with a Neo-Rennaissance, and a
Neo-Industrial Revolution, something for the right brain and
something for the left brain of the world at large.

I hope that you, personally, find at least one more door you
can open via eBooks that you might not have opened otherwise
to a place you will call home.

My Best Wishes To You All!

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg