7. Information Implosion [Next | Previous | Contents]

Angels on the Head of a Pin

When I began writing computer programs in high school in the late 1960s we used the latest IBM technology. When our programs ran, we had the entire machine available to us but had access to only 64,000 characters of internal memory. In addition, on that machine external storage of data on a disk drive was expensive. It cost over $100,000 to store 150 million characters of data so we had to store our programs on punched cards.

As I look back at this situation and compare it with the computer power I have on my desk as I type, I sit in awe. My personal computer has an internal memory of 16 million characters and an external disk drive which will store about a billion characters of data. But my personal computer is a ‘baby’ when compared to what is commercially available today. A single desktop personal computer today can have billions of characters of internal memory, and trillions of characters of storage in external memories. What will be available in another 15 to 20 years?

Most of the data stored for immediate access on computers is stored in magnetic form, on disks coated with an iron oxide (or similar) medium, much like that used on audio cassette tapes. This form of storage has been improved significantly in the past 25 years. In 1967 information could be stored at a density of about 20,000 characters per square inch of space on a disk. Today over two million characters can be stored per square inch. In a few years it will be possible to store over 1 billion characters in about one square inch of magnetic media.

Even with these advances, the storage of digital information on magnetic media may soon be replaced by storage on optical media. These media can have densities of many times that of magnetic storage. [1] Optical media are similar to the CD disks used in home stereo systems. On non-erasable disks tiny holes are burned or moulded into the surface of the disks. The information is read back by bouncing laser light off the disk. The holes reflect the laser light differently than the rest of the surface area on the disk. Since laser light can be focused very precisely, the small holes on the disk can be very close together. Thus high densities of storage can be achieved.

An optical CD-ROM can store textual information equivalent to that found in over 500 books. Thus a library of 1 million books could be stored in optical disk form, on a set of shelves on a single wall. Today many disk manufacturers such as 3M and Kodak are producing optical disk systems that can store 1 trillion characters of data and provide access to any piece of this data in less than 10 seconds. [2]

Within a few years we can expect the storage density of new optical technologies to increase by at least a factor of ten. Within 15 years it will be possible to store the equivalent of a one million book library in the space of a shoe box. [3] This storage device will probably cost around $500. It is even possible that within 20 years a library of 30 million books could be stored in the space occupied by a postage stamp! [4]

The increasing density of storage media is significant and will have profound effects on the availability of information. But of equal significance will be the increased storage life of the media. Magnetic media deteriorate over time, even when not used. Data stored on magnetic tapes can become unreadable within 20 years. In contrast, non-erasable optical disks will last much longer. Current manufacturers suggest that the data will still be readable on optical disks after 100 years.

Optical disks do not wear-out with use since they do not come into physical contact with the read heads. And if they are not mistreated, for all practical purposes they are indestructible. This is one of the reasons that the U.S. National Archives is preserving their documents on optical disks.

The longevity of the data on the disks is based on the assumption that the format of the data will still be known in the future, and that there will be hardware available to read that format. [5] The long-term readability of formatted data will become less of a problem as general standards (such as Unicode for representing various linguistic systems, with or without an alphabet) are developed. In addition, important information in data banks will be regularly transferred to new storage formats and to improved storage technology. Although there may be some loss of content through time, once the information is in digital form, the loss will be far less than is being experienced through the deterioration of paper-based documents.

Digital Documents

The dramatic reduction in the cost of storing information, will make it far less expensive to store documents in electronic form than in paper form. This will lead to a rapid expansion in the number of documents created, stored and displayed entirely with computers. Also, as I discussed earlier (in the section entitled Paperless Society), the production of paper documents, even where computers are used, will become less desirable as the relative cost of paper storage continues to rise and as computer displays become cheaper, less bulky, easier to use and more capable of showing high resolution multi-page images.

Computer-assisted “document preparation has until recently been almost exclusively oriented towards hard-copy output as the end product. Interactive text-editing terminals, electronic typewriters, word-processors, and integrated office automation systems are a highly visible part of a dramatically improving document input technology but are primarily a means of generating paper output on computer-controlled typesetting machines or printers.” [6]

Most ‘documents’ which are created today on a computer look very similar to printed typeset documents. This mirrors a step in the original development of printed documents. At first “printed books were doctored by eraser and paintbrush to give them the manuscript look, revealing the nostalgia of book lovers ... attached to the ‘handmade’ product.” [7] In a similar fashion most of the documents being produced today on computers resemble the printed page, revealing the nostalgia of print lovers ... attached to the ‘typeset’ product.

Thirty years ago Marshall McLuhan noted this process: “Today with the arrival of automation, the ultimate extension of the electro-magnetic form to the organization of production, we are trying to cope with ... new organic production as if it were mechanical mass production.” [8] The organic production and use of digital documents will be a more profound change in the nature of the document than that which was caused by the printing press.

Hypertext

The printing press created new types of documents (e.g., newspapers and magazines) undreamed of in the days of hand printed manuscripts, created new audiences for documents, and introduced to a wide audience linear text which according to McLuhan had an influence on the nature of thought in western culture. Sequential thinking, according to McLuhan, is largely the result of working with sequential text.

The new time sense of typographic man is cinematic and sequential and pictorial. [9]

The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first assembly line, and the first mass production. [10]

It was not until the experience of mass production of exactly uniform and repeatable type, that the fission of the senses occurred, and the visual dimension broke away from the other senses. [11]

With print there is more complete separation of the visual sense from the audile-tactile. [12]

If linear text resulted in sequential thought, what will be the impact of the mechanisms being devised to allow computer supported references from any piece of text to many others?

Hypertext (or ‘non-linear’ text, as it is sometimes called) is not a new concept, and has been used for the organization of information in libraries. Librarians use see and see also references in their cataloguing systems for directing users to related references. Writers and researchers using 3 X 5 cards have also used the concept of hypertext for taking notes. The concept of hypertext is also exhibited in a study Bible’s chain reference system or in a collection of technical papers which, through a series of footnotes and references, tie together a chain of related works.

However, these examples are limited models of the type of hypertext which can be achieved with a computer. Library cross-references relate only to author, subject and title authoritative headings but not to the detailed text of the works. Manual research filing systems and biblical chain references, although they contain cross-references within the body of the text, are limited in scope. Bibliographic references in a collection of works are difficult to follow, since one needs access to all the unpublished works, journals, books, and other publications cited in the work being read.

In the realm of computer supported hypertext “windows on the screen are associated with objects in a database. And links are provided between these objects, both graphically (as labeled tokens) and in the database (as pointers).” [13] The links between nodes of text can connect two documents; a word, sentence, or paragraph in one document to a word, sentence or paragraph in other documents; or a primary node of text to ‘footnotes’, additional in-depth material, reviewer’s comments, or contrary arguments.

“In addition to ... traditional ways of interacting with books, the dynamic nature of computer displays allows one to explore completely new viewing paradigms.” [14] Hypertext supports a range of new operations for looking at documents:

• References can be traced easily and quickly, in the same document or in different documents. A reader of hypertext can have one document displayed on his screen and can follow the links by opening windows on the screen with text from other documents.

• New references can be added to a document. A reviewer can add a counter argument and link it into the document, without affecting the integrity of the first document. Future readers can access the reviewer’s comments or read a counter argument, if they wish.

• Many views of text (sequential, hierarchical, layered [e.g., tables of contents]) can be supported.

• A viewer can request a simple abstracted overview of a document or access varying levels of detail, for example he could review a hypertext medical handbook  [15] at various levels of detail: table of contents, topic summary, or detailed text.

• Sets of text modules can be strung together in various ways, supporting the preparation of unique documents for different classes of readers.

• Ideas can be presented with little overlap since blocks of text can be referenced from a number of sources.

• Alternate versions of a passage can be compared side-by-side in two windows.

• Documents can be correlated by key phrases or ideas. A hypertext version of the Oxford English Dictionary is an example. [16]

• “Analogues to all the conventional ways of viewing hard-copy material can be devised for use with on-line documents, including leaving a trail of book marks, highlighting important material, making marginal notes, spreading out multiple pages (as from a looseleaf binder), quick alternation between a glossary and main text, etc.”  [17]

As anyone who uses the World Wide Web extensively knows, there is one major disadvantage of hypertext. It is easy to get lost in a hypertext document, or to become lost in ‘hyperspace’. [18] A reader of a large document may find it difficult to find an obvious ‘starting’ point or to find a previous section that had been read. This problem will not be easily solved, but help can be provided to the reader in the form of query and search mechanisms, and by placing milestone markers — for example, the use of different colours at different levels.

There are many research projects which have been undertaken to develop hypertext into a viable approach to handling information. These projects have had creative names such as Boxer, Intermedia, Neptune, Plane Text, SYNVIEW, Textnet, Hyperties, WE, Xanadu, and ZOG. [19] Some of the results of the research has been applied on the Web, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to make navigating and finding information on the Web easier. Eventually descendants of these laboratory systems will become common and hypertext databases of most of mankind’s literature will become widely available. At that point, the current hypertext browsers will be replaced by information organizers and ‘intelligent’ agents. The concept of linear text processing (e.g., reading a book from cover to cover) will no longer be the ‘normal’ approach to ‘reading’. Instead readers will navigate through text with alternate paths (e.g., paths for a novice and expert) or will read novels with many branches at critical decisions and many conclusions.

Square Pegs in Square Holes

In order for hypertext to become as effective and pervasive as print media, it will be necessary for hypertext systems to support the inclusion of documents from various sources and in various formats (e.g., books, journal articles, spreadsheets, formulas, music scores, etc.). This will require the creation (or de facto acceptance) of standard electronic document formats that go beyond the current, very limited, hypertext markup language (HTML). Document markup is the process of encoding text with labels. Labels can be used to identify heading levels, paragraph types, underlining, indentation, etc.

New standards for the communication of contextual information in textual, graphical, pictorial, and musical formats are in fact being developed. Recognizing the importance of document portability, “representatives of publishers and of organizations with large publishing costs have joined in an effort to establish an industry-wide standard.” [20] In its Electronic Manuscript Project, the Association of American Publishers endorsed a standard for document markup. Logos, which manufactures Bible software, has worked with a number of CD publishers to develop a similar standard. Within a few years, HTML will be replaced or will evolve to include a broader set of capabilities for handling most forms of digital information.

From an author’s and publisher’s viewpoint, the advantages of having a recognized standard include the following: [21]

• Authors will be able to share and collaborate on electronic documents.

• Publishers will not have to rekey documents, thus eliminating an error-prone expensive task.

• Proof-reading of text after authoring will be reduced since the content will not change. Only the presentation format will be changed.

• Subsequent editions and revisions will be easily produced.

• Documents will be included quickly and easily into online data bases and the Web.

• Text indexes for query systems will be easy to produce.

Hypermedia Navigation

Hypermedia is an extension of hypertext. It seems to have been first described by Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. In an article “As We May Think” published in Atlantic Monthly he wrote: “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library ... in which an individual stores his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged supplement to his memory.” [22] Bush was thinking of what a modern personal computer can do, thirty years before the personal computer was invented.

As in hypertext, the indexing and retrieval capabilities of computers are used for storing and accessing information. But hypermedia allows text to be used in novel ways, and it accommodates other media besides text. For example:

• A visually impaired person will be able to display text with a large font and in high contrast. Those not wishing to read, or unable to read, will be able to have the text read to them. For example software such as TextAssist, inexpensive software for Microsoft Windows, will read aloud any selected text from e-mail messages, Web pages, or documents stored on the a PC.

• Footnotes will no longer be ‘foot’ notes at the bottom of the page or end of the document. Instead a reader will be able to point to any text portion or object on the screen highlighted in some fashion (e.g., with colour, or a small symbol) to access an additional layer of detail about the object under consideration. For example, if the text made reference to Martin Luther, a viewer could point (with a mouse) to his name and access a whole library of information about him, including pictures of him, hymns written by him (which could be listened to as well as read), sermons written by him, biographical information about him, and documents written about him. [23],  [24],  [25],  [26]

• Animated diagrams or interactive computer dialogues will be incorporated into a document. For example, a hypermedia mechanic’s service manual will show various components of a car on the screen. The mechanic will point to one component, have it decomposed into its constituent parts, see an animated or videotaped scenario of how to trouble shoot or repair the part, request inventory information on the availability of a part, and (if necessary) place an order for the part. [27] The Society of Automotive Engineers has developed standards for such a system. [28]

• “A document could automatically contact its author by telephone for in-depth discussion.”  [29]

• The cursive letters of the Arabic script, and Hebrew type, could be displayed. English text and Arabic and Hebrew text can be automatically intermixed, with the English being displayed left-to-right and the other text being displayed right-to-left. [30]

Grolier, Compton’s, Microsoft, National Geographic, and many other companies have introduced electronic encyclopedias and ‘picture books’ which incorporate the features of hypermedia. The cost of manufacturing a disk is under $5. Updates of the entire contents can be sent annually. In addition, a hybrid approach for information dissemination can include hyperlinks to recent Web-based updates to the content of the CD.

There are thousands of CD titles for use with a computer, and the number of products is at the point of ‘explosion’. Examples include:

• The Doomsday Book published in Britain contains 40,000 colour pictures and 250,000 pages of text, and numerous maps. It includes information on every region down to the smallest hamlet in Great Britain. It even includes floor plans of interesting historic buildings. [31]

• An impressive example of hypermedia technology is Microsoft’s Musical Instruments which displays a collection of the world’s instruments. Choices can be made by geographic location, by instrument name, or by class of instrument. Individual instruments can be viewed on the screen with an explanation of their key parts. And the instruments can play a scale or a representative piece. The voices of most of the instruments are recorded at digital CD quality.

• National Geographic is developing a series called The National Geographic Wonders of Learning CD-ROM Library with dozens of titles on CD disks.

• Columbia University has released disks with 45,000 rare architectural drawings including some by Frank Lloyd Wright.

• The Getty Museum’s collection of illuminated manuscripts has been preserved on video disk.

• A collection of 130,000 sketches, watercolours and pastel drawings from the Louvre in Paris has been assembled into a CD collection. [32]

• Cornell University worked with Xerox to record about 1,000 of its endangered volumes on optical disk. They were able to remove the old volumes from the shelves and replace them with new copies printed on acid free paper. In addition they were able to provide these volumes online. [33]

• The Library of Congress plans to digitize the most important materials from its collection and portions of collections in other libraries. [34]

• Compton’s offers a CD with over 600 classical books, and many popular reference sources are available in digital form, including: The World Almanac and Book of Facts, The American Heritage Dictionary, The U.S. Zip Code Directory, The Chicago Manual of Style, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Roget’s Thesaurus,  [35] Business Writer’s Handbook, Associated Press Style Book,  [36] and the Oxford English Dictionary. [37]

• Bible concordances and Bible texts are also available,  [38],  [39] as are CDs containing hundreds of titles including Bible versions, study guides, commentaries  [40], and educational products such as Charlton Heston’s Voyage Through the Bible.

• The Electronic Bible Society is making available in CD format collections of English and American Puritan writers, the works of Luther, the Church Fathers, and hundreds of other authors. [41]

• The Mindware catalogue lists many titles including: Composer Quest — explore the world of music through the lives of composers, Great Cities — trip-planning guide through 10 great cities, USA Wars: Vietnam/Korea, and World View — 100 photos of Earth and the other planets as seen by NASA.

Apple Computer and Microsoft are among the companies which have introduced software tools which provide support for the creation of hypermedia documents. The software “is designed to let users create, organize, and access various types of information, including text, graphics, video, music and voice.” [42] Icons displayed on the screen can be programmed to perform tasks such as dialing the telephone or conducting searches. [43]

These hypermedia products are now standard equipment on all Macintosh computers and in Windows for IBM-compatible PCs. Most PCs are sold with built-in CD-ROM drives and stereo sound systems to support these first generation hypermedia systems. By the end of the century second generation systems will be part of the ‘toolbox’ of every computer. With the acceptance of active documents in a ‘dynapaper’ [44] environment (thin, light, high-resolution computers) the static, serial book will become ancient history, just as it is in the science fiction book called Earth:

The air carried thick aromas, but Nelson tried to ignore all those deceptively natural sensoria for the archaic paper reading device in his hands.

If only it were a modern document, with a smart index and hyper links stretching all through the world data net. It was terribly frustrating having to flip back and forth between pages and crude, flat illustrations that never even moved! Nor were there animated arrows or zoom-ins. It completely lacked a tap for sound.

Most baffling of all was the problem of new words. ...

When he’d complained about this, earlier, Dr. B’Keli only handed him another of these flat books, something called a ‘dictionary’, whose arcane use eluded him entirely.

How did students back in TwenCen ever learn anything at all? he wondered. [45]

Econosis

Digital information stored in repositories interconnected on the Electronic Highway (the Internet or a future equivalent) will become the library of the future. All the information that they contain will be accessible with advanced searching search techniques. [46] Current generation programs include such features as complex Boolean searching (and, or, not), proximity searching (associated words within so many words of one another), and similarity searching (matching on word mix by percentage). More advanced search techniques will conduct ‘random walks’ through extensive sets of databases and identify related materials in databases not specifically referenced for a search.

The information found in a search will be communicated across the high speed networks of the Electronic Highway to multi-window high-resolution computer displays. Everyone with an entry port will be able to access vast quantities of shared information. [47], [48], [49]

Some futurists have referred to this type of technology contributing to an information explosion. But, rather than an information explosion, there will be an information implosion, as all the knowledge of the world is aggregated into central information clearing houses, for which I have invented the term econosis (house of knowledge).

Each econosis will provide a combination of services, including publishing, abstracting, organizing, and indexing information. As a publisher, each econosis, will provide a sub-set of knowledge. Each will initially be organized around a particular set of topic (e.g., medical information, chemistry research, travel consulting, automobile repair manuals, etc.). Most will also provide general information (e.g., world news) purchased from an econosis providing a world news service. The staff of the econosis will be skilled in many areas of the subject matter collected within the econosis. In addition, they will have cataloguing skills for preparing a set of hypermedia links among the database components.

Within twenty five years a number of the specialized econoses may form into consortia and their subscribers will be able to access a broader range of information through one source. At some point in the not too distant future there may be a few large econoses which will contain or index and reference major portions of the world’s documented knowledge base. This has been the goal of some recent research projects. For example, “the long range goal of the Xanadu project has been facilitating the revolutionary process of placing the entire world’s literary corpus on line.” [50]

The foundations for a comprehensive hypermedia econosis has already been laid. There are at least 23,000 data banks from over 1,500 sources in North America, and this number is growing rapidly. [51] Some of the larger suppliers of data bank services are CompuServe, America Online, The Source (owned by Reader’s Digest), Dun & Bradstreet’s information utilities, and McGraw-Hill’s Publications Online. The World Wide Web and indexing services such as Web Crawler and Yahoo! already act in some ways as a super-econosis, loosely connecting many sources of information. However, these services are becoming strained with the volume of data, and do not include most of the information for which an access fee is charged.

Data banks can be grouped into reference and source data banks. [52] Reference data banks have pointers which direct users to sources of information. For example they contain bibliographic citations, abstracts [53] of printed literature (journals, books, newspaper articles) and non-published works (e.g., doctoral theses), audiovisual materials (films, videotapes). An example of this is the NY Times’ Information Bank which provides over 2 million abstracts of news and editorials since 1969. At least ten other newspapers and over 50 magazines are also abstracted in this data bank. [54] Another example is the OCLC EPIC and FirstSearch reference services which provide about 50 different abstract databases including Medline (containing medical and scientific abstracts), Humanities Index, and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, and the OCLC Online Union Catalogue.

The second type of data bank contains full source information. These data banks can contain statistical information such as census and survey data presented in time-series form, often by geographic area and industry. Others contain scientific information such as the composition of chemical compounds or engineering handbook data. Others contain the full text of articles written for newspapers and news magazines or published in technical journals.

InfoGlobe of Toronto, the first commercially available on-line newspaper in the world, is an example of a specialized source data bank. It contains the text of all issues of the Globe and Mail since 1977. This is updated daily. All the text is fully indexed for rapid retrieval of information. InfoGlobe also contains the annual data for about 2000 Canadian corporations for up to 12 years, business information from over 1000 different sources (including The Financial Times, Economist, Washington Post and the Guardian) and a complete listing of all stocks (daily high, low, close and volume for the last 250 trading days, and weekly, since 1982) on six North American stock exchanges. Nexus of the Washington Post provides a similar service. It contains the full text of the Washington Post since about 1979, and much other information.

U.S. data banks such as CompuServe, for example, provide news and financial information, entertainment and shopping services with thousands of products available, and special-interest forums where subscribers can exchange information. CompuServe is probably the largest econosis today. And yet it is but a shadow of the econoses which will be available in twenty five years. The future econosis will not only display text and some limited graphical information. It will be a rich hypermedia environment with unbelievably vast quantities of information in textual, verbal, graphical, pictorial, video, animated and musical formats.

To gain an appreciation of what is happening in the development of the econosis you can ‘surf the Web’, or consult, in a public library, a data bank directory such as:

• Directory of Online Databases

• The North American Online Directory

The information in the econosis of the future will come from many sources. Much of it is presently in archives and libraries around the world, but only in paper or microfilm formats. It will be necessary to transform this information into digital form via scanners and digitizers.

The U.S. National Archives is an example of an information base which is available largely in paper form only, but which will be soon available in digital form. The National Archives has undertaken a pilot project to transform a portion of its 15 billion documents into digital form stored on optical disk. The optical scanning technology used on this project is similar to that developed for the Landsat satellite program. The purpose of the pilot project is to compare the long-term suitability of optical disk storage with paper and microfilm. It is expected that the quality of the digital image will be better in many instances than that of the original, since computer image enhancement technology can be applied during the scanning operation. [55]

Eventually much of the information in the archives will be converted to digital form. When this step is taken, a vast research base of original material will become widely available. It no longer will be necessary to handle fragile documents and to obtain and refile them manually. In addition, the documents will be accessible at any display screen anywhere on earth.

Similar projects are underway at the Library of Congress (which has the largest repository of knowledge in the world) and other archival institutions such as Cornell University and Yale. [56] It is expected that by the year 2000, a core part of the Library of Congress’ collection will be online and accessible through the Electronic Highway. [57] Similarly, at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain historical maps, letters, rare books, and other documents are being converted to optical disk, and will be accessible through high-capacity lines. [58], [59]

The transformation of books into digital form will proceed in a similar fashion. Text scanners have been available for over 20 years. The simple ones scan a document and transform it into a series of dots. These dots can be stored, displayed and transmitted across a network. This is the principle underlying facsimile transmission. Many businesses use facsimile (FAX) transmission to send documents among their branches or to other businesses.

This method of page scanning however retains the page only as an image. No ‘knowledge’ of the contents is available to the computer. However, software has been available for almost as long as scanners, which can process the dots and determine what alphabetic characters are represented. This process is knows as optical character recognition, or OCR.

Pure text without embedded diagrams or pictures is relatively easy to convert into digital form. Various fonts can be read by the computer and stored. The text digitized by this software can be processed and indexed in the same way as text prepared originally at a computer keyboard. More sophisticated OCR software is being developed to find text on complex pages and separate the text from images. [60] As this software matures, it will be quite simple to transform entire libraries into digital form. This is being done for example at Columbia University’s Law Library. [61]

Only one copy of a particular book need be digitized to be available to many users of the econosis. It will not be necessary for every library to digitize its entire collection. Libraries working together will be able to share the load of digitizing material held in many collections by having each library take a portion of the material held in common. In addition, each will have to digitize the portion of its collection which is unique. Libraries are already familiar with this approach to sharing work. They currently share cataloguing services through central clearing houses such as OCLC, where one master copy of a catalogue record can be accessed by many libraries.

It is becoming easier and easier to move the material in printed books, journals and magazines, into digital form. So, the major problem with the creation of the information base for an econosis with the same material as a modern library is no longer a technical one. Rather, it has become a problem with the existing copyright laws. As you have probably noticed, almost every book published today has a statement in the front which says something like this: “no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise — without the prior permission of the owner.” This is the stumbling block to the creation of the full scale econosis. As one technical journalist has said:

One sticking point for hypermedia is copyrights. If they are too restrictive, no one views the work, if too permissive, producers get no remuneration and incentives. Indeed, some say the success or failure of multimedia may be driven less by technology than by the economics of authoring — including the procurement of copyright material. [62]

And, as another writer has said:

Your copyright ends, emotionally, at my modem. I can copy, move, merge, edit, lift and delete anything I want any way I want. E-Texts have no quotation marks. They are baud-rated into an intrinsically public domain and immediately expropriated into a thousand private domains. [63]

The first books to be available in an econosis will be those of enduring value for which the copyright has expired (for example, the King James Version of the Bible). As Christians we should be sensitive to the rights of an author to receive compensation for his work, whether it is a book, a musical composition or software. We should never copy copyrighted material beyond what is permitted by law, and certainly never to avoid having to pay for the material.

However, it appears that the current laws and approaches to copyright and ownership will not be able to last much longer. The power of the computer to copy anything, from text and pictures to music and software, will make change necessary. Eventually the concepts of a copyright and the ownership of information will have to change because “once digitized, information is free to slip from the old physical ‘bottles’ to which we have always attached our protective marks and into its natural home, Cyberspace. On-line, it will be as hard to own or contain as air.” [64] Current laws will change as the econosis accessed via hypermedia systems becomes the normal source for obtaining information.

Microsoft and other companies have projects underway in their research labs to define ways for handling small transaction fees for information use and for permanently marking the source of copyrighted digital material. Whether or not their research will result in practical approaches will not be known for a few years. It seems unlikely that they will be successful, it is just too easy for a person to make a copy of any information in digital form. Instead, new concepts of payment for authors and publishers will have to be established, such as charging for advertising or for services. [65]

Another type of information which will be available will be that prepared totally on computers and made available electronically through computer networks. Massive amounts of the information which will be in the econosis of the future are already being produced in digital form. The cooperative news sources are largely computerized today. Stories filed with these news bureaus are available to news media subscribers in digital form. Much more is filed by reporters than appears in print. In fact, only about ten percent of what is collected is ever used. [66], [67] The editors of the news media choose the information which they wish to incorporate in their publications. The rest is left out.

If this information were available in an econosis, a subscriber could conduct searches on subjects and keywords of interest and obtain many documents. Included would be stories which had reached the public through a printed or electronic publication, and also those which had not been formally published.

Another major source of information in the econosis will be electronic publications. The electronic publication is already a reality in some specialized scientific disciplines. [68], [69] InfoGlobe is also an example of an electronic publication, since the text of the Globe and Mail is available electronically as well as in printed form. Many of the components are already in place; and when the general public has access to cheap high quality display devices, magazines and journals will be submitted, transmitted for review, edited, announced, published, and made available to subscribers completely in electronic form. [70], [71]

Initially the electronic publication available on-line will be essentially an on-line mirror of what is available in paper form. [72] But it will eventually become quite different from a paper publication. A paper publication is relatively static and difficult to revise. In contrast an electronic publication can be revised in seconds. One author refers to this as the “infinite article and fungible journal.” He goes on to say that:

No published academic article need ever become ‘dated’. Every author who writes electronically with a word processor and ‘saves to disk’ can instantly revise every article, even old ones, on the basis of later findings, peer criticism or new developments. [73]

The electronic journal is not purely in the future. In 1991 there were over 100 electronic journals, and by 1994, according to the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists, there were over 400 electronic journals. [74]

Another source of information in the econosis will be consumer information such as that currently available through videotext services (e.g., Prestel in Great Britain, and Antiope in France) and data banks (e.g., The Source and CompuServe). This information already exists in digital form. The list is practically endless but includes, transportation schedules, price lists and shopping catalogues, telephone and similar directories, and legal and medical advice in self-help form.

As the level of consumer information in the econosis increases, the usefulness to subscribers will increase. In current systems, both the level of information available and the number of subscribers is growing. When a threshold level of subscribers and data is reached, there will be a rapid increase in the amount of information and the number of new subscribers. The two will be mutually supporting. When there are more subscribers, more organizations will find it worthwhile to load their information. With more useful information available, more people will find it worthwhile to subscribe to the service.

Electronic Alexandria

The library as we know it will die out during the next few decades. In its place will arise the econosis, an electronic library which will store most of the books ever published, and vast numbers of journals, papers, and periodicals. [75] Many writers and organizations have seen this coming change. The following are a few examples:

The information revolution of the 1980s and 1990s offers us a step towards a new kind of Alexandria, i.e., towards an abundance of information of universal availability ... [76]

He uploads it to the CIC database — the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word ‘congress’ means. And even the word ‘library’ is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeros. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated ... [77]

For the past three years, the ACM Publications Board has been developing its vision for the future of publication in the electronic age ... We envisage a diminishing role for print journals and exiting new programs around an ACM digital library. [78]

We must begin now to deal with this cresting, irresistible wave of digital media, one that comprises the most powerful vision of communication ever known on Earth. It is a vision in which the bulk of all significant knowledge and recordable events will be inevitably recast into discrete, computer-negotiable pulses. [79]

Ignoring the new organizational interfaces being brought about by digital libraries because paper is still dominant is unwise for authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, and readers. [80]

There are a number of reasons why we will see this shift. First, is the inability of current libraries to keep up with the flood of paper.

Academic libraries are buying proportionately less and less of the newly arriving literature. New publications are increasing in cost and in volume by a factor larger than the general increase in the economy. At the same time libraries are becoming more labour-intensive and space-consuming. ... In the world as a whole there are now more than 50,000 journals pouring through university and academic presses every year. They are increasing in size at a compound rate of 4 percent a year. It is common for journals to double their size every five years. At this rate, it has become clear that the traditional forms of publication and systems of access to published material are defeating their own objective of circulating information to those who need it. [81]

In addition the cost of subscribing to technical journals continues to rise faster than the budgets of libraries. Many libraries are deacquisitioning journals. [82] Instead of subscribing to some journals they borrow them through inter-library loan. This results in fewer subscribers and an increased cost for an individual subscription. “Established publishers could find their livelihoods threatened, if they fail to react quickly.” [83]

Second, is the limitation of the book as a media for disseminating information. A book requires a lot of unnecessary space (consider the amount of ‘white space’ in every book) and can only be in one place at a time. “The book’s limitation lies in its physical size and rigidity. A functional modern school ought to have a library equivalent to that of a small university, but that information ought not to be contained within books. It ought to be available at any student workstation via student enquiry.” [84]

Third, there is the increasing requirement of a large clientele for more specific information in a variety of subject areas and in numerous media. No library is able to meet this challenge adequately. In fact libraries no longer supply only printed matter. They circulate videotapes, records, talking books, sheet music, computer software, etc. All of this information will be available from an econosis.

Fourth, the econosis will replace the library because it will become a utility for the movement of information. It can take months and even years to publish a technical journal or book. “We are rapidly moving towards a stage in the evolution of machine-read material in which the researcher will function in a wholly different way from the past. An on-line terminal will be the basic means for not only acquiring relevant information but also for collecting notes and personal abstracts. For sending out letters to colleagues and reading them, for composition and ‘publication’ of research reports.” [85], [86], [87]

An author can draft his material, send it to colleagues for review and criticism, automatically transpose into his own work diagrams, charts, and tables from other works, check his own references automatically, and use a full range of text-manipulation devices. ... The gradations of publications between individuals, groups, and general publics can be achieved essentially through the same machinery. [88]

Electronic journals are available today in the science, computer science and engineering disciplines. They are written, published and prepared by researchers who share a common E-mail network (e.g., the Internet [89]) or access a common data bank such as COMPMAIL+. COMPMAIL+ is accessible to members of the Computer Society of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE). Members can use the E-mail facilities of this network, post and scan items on the electronic bulletin board, read abstracts of more than 650 journals, conduct keyword searches on newswire data banks, and prepare and submit conference papers.

COMPMAIL+ is linked into the standard communications networks such as the Internet. The linking of various scientific and engineering computer communication and publication networks is “historically unprecedented and largely unheralded. ... Its ultimate impact on scientific progress will be profound. ... Over the next few years, the explosive growth of a national high speed computer network linking universities and industries will enable thousands of researchers ... to conduct research and collaborate with one another ... Experts say that, by the end of the century, some one million scientists could be linked by the system, the first all inclusive scientific network in history.” [90]

This approach to communication and document preparation is moving beyond the hi-tech professions. For example, in San Francisco the Coordinated Asbestos Insurance Trial used the equivalent of a specialized econosis and an electronic journal. Each of the 30 lawyers in the courtroom and the presiding judge had displays on their desks which could access over 1 million pages of text in the data bank prepared for the trial. Lawyers could query the information in the data bank to find appropriate exhibits. As they prepared new material they could reference any of the existing material and then add their documents for immediate availability to the other lawyers. In addition, they could summarize information in the data bank to produce statistical reports. [91]

This form of information interchange is a fundamental transformation in the process of intellectual communication. The computer has reduced the cost of preparing typeset text, “but at the same time [has] introduced the possibility of a further series of changes (which [are] far from complete) which [will] ... change the whole nature of the medium. Thus it was also in the early days of printing, when the Gutenbergian principle was introduced to reduce the labour of copying text but stayed to change the nature of text itself and its role in society.” [92]

Fifth, the traditional library will disappear as more members of the general public acquire personal computers for communication with businesses, to pay bills, to effect the transfer of funds, to purchase goods, to communicate, to access information data banks, and for entertainment. When these devices become widely available, the owners will expect the econosis to provide the information which is now available in a public library. Arthur C. Clarke’s book 2010, the sequel to 2001, hints at this direction:

The tiny cubbyhole he used as his inner sanctum was equipped only with a swivel chair, a desk console, and a blackboard flanked by two photographs. ... There were no books, and not even paper and pencil on the desk. All the volumes in all the libraries of the world were instantly available at the touch of Chandra’s fingers, and the visual display was his sketchbook and writing pad. [93]

By 2010, we will probably see the end of Carnegie’s bequest. As the library of the 19th century disappears the role of librarians will change from being collection builders and cataloguers to being information retrievers and problem solvers. [94]

Mount Ebal

Compared with the new electronic tools of the econosis the old methods of books, pens, and typewriters will soon “belong to the horse-and-buggy era. The new urban peasantry could be those without the means to acquire the technology of the information era. The chasm between the information rich and poor may be vast.” [95] The information poor will be those who cannot afford to purchase the technology, or more likely those who cannot (or will not) learn to use the new technology.

The price of a gateway into an econosis will not be expensive. The monthly cost will be less than the cost of a cable TV hook-up or a telephone connection, and will be accessible through either network. Regardless, there will be some who will not be able to connect to the network.

However, the bigger proportion of the information poor, may be among those who cannot or will not learn to use the new technology. The current public information ‘tools’ are not used by the majority of the population. Will it be any different with the next generation of tools? Today the library is “a sprawling information network ... yet it has failed to capture the popular imagination. Only one in four adults currently uses these facilities. And if information is perceived as concentrated in the hands of a few, it is not for want of trying to make it available to the ‘masses’. But even with outreach programs, storefront libraries and bookmobiles — the ultimate in ‘taking it to the streets’ — libraries remain middle class institutions serving a small section of the population.” [96]

The new tools in some ways will be easier to use than paper based libraries. For example, they will not require a person to leave home in order to access information, and information will be available through the same tools that will be used for entertainment and personal business, such as shopping and banking. But at the same time these tools will be more difficult to use. Hypermedia will be many levels more complex than an encyclopedia. It will require considerable skill to navigate through the vast information bases containing most of the world’s documented information. Most people will use the new technology only for the necessities of survival in 21st century society. However, they will not know how or want to learn how to go beyond the surface into the depths of the econosis. They will be the information poor.

Another problem with the econosis will be its introduction of additional levels of abstraction. “Since a letter is already an abstract representation of speech, a symbol for actual language, the leap to digitized representation of letters adds yet another layer of abstraction. Without doubt, the expansion of the fourth level means increasing intellectualization of reality.” [97] An econosis using hypermedia not only adds the abstraction of digitization; it also adds levels of abstraction into the organization of information itself.

TV has been criticized for blurring the distinction between reality and fiction. The econosis will carry this another step. For those who use the econosis for work, personal business, entertainment and personal communication, ‘reality’ will be contained within the display console of their gateway. Although T. S. Eliot was not thinking of the econosis when he wrote Choruses From ‘The Rock’, part of this poem seems to express well how the implosion of information could well lead to a user’s disconnection with reality:

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust. [98]

Of concern also should be the ownership of the econosis. “The owners of media always endeavour to give the public what it wants, because they sense that their power is in the medium and not in the message or the program.” [99] But Christians know that what the public wants is not always what it needs. For example, most people do not want to hear of their responsibility before God and of the necessity of belief in Jesus and repenting of sin. Yet this is what they need!

If the econosis or the Electronic Highway is controlled by a non-Christian government or by a non-Christian business which has no respect for God and his revealed will, we can expect to see censorship and editing of explicitly Christian material. This censorship of content exists today in newspaper publishing and in libraries. For example, library material which has been available for years is being removed from the shelves to be replaced by material which is considered to be more ‘politically correct’. [100]

Censorship of content also exists with other forms of media. For example, in both the UK and Canada religious organizations are not permitted to develop their own TV networks. One could argue that the U.S. experience with so-called ‘Christian’ TV is not exemplary. But at least, to this point, there is less direct regulation of the content on the medium.

The degree of control of information will be inversely proportional to the extent to which information is concentrated in one or a few econoses. If the entire population receives its information from a very limited repository of information, we can expect the bias to be exceptionally strong. “It is foolhardy ... to assume information resources will forever go largely unregulated.” [101]

Mount Gerizim

Where an econosis has not been purged of Christian content, current news about events in the Church will be available much more quickly than it is today in religious periodicals, and will be available in more depth than it is in religious broadcasting today.

But I believe that the most exciting aspect of the creation of an econosis will be the availability of access to the knowledge base of the world. The econosis will provide a source of all of the available theological work published through the past 2,000 years. This widespread availability of biblical material may contribute to a reformation of the Church since it is possible that we will see a return to a more serious consideration of the application of biblical principles to daily life, much as was seen in the days of Luther.

A list of examples of the objects which will be available in the econosis in hypermedia form includes: manuscripts of the Old Testament and New Testament, Greek and Hebrew texts, all the classics of the Church fathers, [102] all the books and articles of any significance written within Christendom, scores of tunes used within the Church, vocal selections sung in different liturgical traditions, images of historically significant documents, pictures of prominent Christians of the past, maps, [103] and pictures or diagrams of famous churches and archaeological digs.

Digitized sources for the information which will be in the econosis are appearing today. At Princeton Theological Seminary a Professor used computer image enhancement techniques to process an early 2nd century codex containing an erased translation of the Gospels. The purpose was to process out the dark image of the text written over the translation and to highlight the erased text which left a faint image when photographed under ultraviolet light. [104] These computer images, and similar ones of manuscripts, could be made available in an econosis and be available to anyone interested in viewing them.

It is interesting to see how God has worked out the preservation of the text of the Bible. The ancient scribes counted scrupulously the letters in the Old Testament when they copied the text. Because of their efforts the text of the Old Testament is amazingly consistent across the families of manuscripts. From their work Rabbi Aqiba (died ca. AD 132) developed a standard text. He emphasized the importance of a standard Hebrew text to counteract the Christians who used primarily the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament.

As “the work of the [Old Testament school of] scribes came to an end around the beginning of the sixth century after Christ” [105] God raised up the Masoretic scribes. They continued the tradition of the ancient scribes until about 1000 AD. The manuscripts which they copied are the ones on which most of the printed Hebrew texts of the Old Testament are based today. During this period God was also preserving the Greek New Testament text through the copying practices of the monks.

When the printing press was invented, there was a solid tradition of careful copying; and also many old manuscripts were still available. The printed text of the Bible quickly became very reliable. In the past 300 years a number of significant Old Testament (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls) and New Testament (e.g., papyri which are copies of portions of John’s Gospel from about 200 AD) manuscripts have been added to the collection. The printed text of the Bible is essentially word-for-word that which was written by the original authors. God has preserved the manuscripts long enough to make them available to those preparing the printed text.

Interestingly, he has also preserved them long enough for computer technology to become available. With this technology images of the manuscripts can be made. These images for all practical purposes are indestructible. Identical digital copies can be made many times, and spread throughout the world. Long after the copies on papyrus and vellum have deteriorated, computer images of these manuscripts will be widely available. It seems likely that computer technology will make these manuscripts available “as long as the earth endures.”

Another source of digitized Christian material has been prepared by Westminster Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. They have prepared digitized versions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. [106], [107], [108] At Westminster, they compared two computerized Old Testament texts to produce a ‘cleaner’ version, and then compared this version against a version edited in Israel. Differences in the encodings were compared against a facsimile of the Leningrad Codex and printed editions of the text. The end product is a machine-readable accurate version of the 4.5 million characters of the Old Testament. The long-term goal of the project calls for the morphological tagging of each word and encoding for syntactic analysis. This text will be available in the public domain at minimal cost. [109]

At Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the GRAMCORD project created a computerized version of the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. Each word was tagged with its morphological characteristics (for example the case, person, and gender of a noun). Although other computerized tagged texts exist (e.g., the Friberg Database based on the 3rd edition of the United Bible Societies text), the GRAMCORD system includes retrieval routines and analytical programs. The text and some of these tools can be purchased for $500. Additional work is underway to include the Septuagint, writings from Josephus, writings of a Greek writer not influenced by Semitic language or thought, and the text of some of the papyri. [110]

It is now possible to have a computer display the encoded versions of the Old Testament and New Testament text with a Hebrew or Greek character set. The text can be searched by the computer and displayed on the screen with the corresponding English text from a number of different translations. The Christian Computing includes in each issue a number of advertisements for PC-based products which provide these capabilities. [111]

The underlying encoding of the texts will be used by researchers. They will be able to study the patterns of word usage and sentence structure. This will be helpful in the debate over the authorship of books of the Bible. For example, researchers at Haifa’s Israel Institute of Technology found that the documentary hypothesis (J.E.P.D) of the book of Genesis (which claims that four sources written over hundreds of years were assembled about the time of Ezra into the final form of the book) is not supported by computer analysis. The study based on over 50 criteria of language behaviour shows instead “that it is the work of a single writer and that the J.E.P.D theory must be ‘rejected or at least thoroughly revised.’” [112]

Moises Silva of Westminster Theological Seminary has said that “some scholars in the humanities — and biblical students in particular — would argue that the greatest value of computer technology for their research lies in th[e area of literary analysis.]” [113] You may not be involved directly in this work, but you will see the benefits of it.

With the Greek and Hebrew Bible texts and texts of other ancient documents available from the econosis, a person will be able to do complex research and word studies. For example, he will be able to find all word usages (including compound structures such as all verses containing two identified words or word patterns) with a simple search command, and will not have to look through concordances and word-study books. Tools for this purpose are already becoming available for personal computers For example the HyperBible available for the Macintosh contains the text of the Bible, a chain reference, and an atlas. [114] Other products available for the IBM PC such as Bible Works, Logos, QuickVerse, and Bible Windows, include similar capabilities.

It will be possible to conduct a similar study on theological subjects of interest. You will be able to scan large numbers of books and articles to find anything written on the subject under consideration. Books that have gone out of print, articles in obscure publications, writings of the Church Fathers contained in expensive volumes, and up-to-date opinion, will all be accessible for inclusion in any research.

The econosis will change the nature of how we process information. The researcher/writer who has read [115] a lot will no longer be able to impress us with his long bibliography. In addition, the widely publicized opinions of one writer will not command as much attention. Everyone will have access to the same sources.

Because all source material will be generally available to all readers, it will become necessary to apply more critical thought to information being digested. You will find when you do your search, for example, Presbyterian writings on a particular subject, but also Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Baptist writings (and even material from the cults). Initially, this will overwhelm many readers.

However, I think that when readers are confronted with opinions and ideas which vary widely, critical analysis becomes necessary. For example, the liturgical tradition to which I belong includes the exclusive singing of the Psalms in public worship, unaccompanied by instrumental music. Most evangelical Christians have no idea that this was the prevailing form of worship in most protestant churches in NA until the mid-1700s and in many denominations until late in the last century. Today the idea of exclusive Psalmody is seen as peculiar. If, however, all the material written on the subject were included in an econosis, many more Christians would stumble on the idea and begin to pursue the historical and theological perspectives of the matter.

The econosis is going to make it very difficult for any thinking person to ignore ideas beyond his tradition. As one writer in the Smithsonian has commented, the new media will likely open up a new way of thinking:

The reasonably permanent inscribing and interpreting of word order is not just an affair of scribes, elites and ideologies, in other words. As the written memory grew and could be called back for review, it opened a cognitive window on a new world of ideas.

For all of the random noise and incoherence accompanying them, could our new capabilities for almost limitless information storage and retrieval have a comparable generative effect? [116]

With so many differing opinions fighting for recognition, Truth will stand above the crowd. The impact may be as great as when the ploughman in England was first given the Bible in his native language. The Holy Spirit may choose to use the econosis as the means of encouraging people to consider truth, and in so doing bring about a revival of Christianity and a reformation of the Church.

Copyright © 1997, James R. Hughes. All rights reserved.

Endnotes [Next | Previous | Contents]

[1] Abraham Peled, “The Next Computer Revolution,” Scientific American, October, 1987. Back

[2] William Hawkins, “Electronics Newsfront — Terabytes of Storage,” Popular Science, September, 1987. Back

[3] Ellen Muraskin, “Electronics Newsfront — Memory Crystal,” Popular Science, August, 1992. Back

[4] Robert Langreth, “Why Scientists are Thinking Small,” Popular Science, April, 1993. Back

[5] Jess Rothenberg, “Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents,” Scientific American, January, 1995. Back

[6] Mike Bonham and Ian H. Witten, “Towards Distributed Document Preparation with Interactive and Non-Interactive Viewing,” INFOR, November, 1985. Back

[7] Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), p. 516. Back

[8] Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), p. 130. Back

[9] Ibid., p. 241. Back

[10] Ibid., p. 124. Back

[11] Ibid., p. 54. Back

[12] Ibid., p. 93. Back

[13] Jeff Conklin, “Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey,” IEEE Computer, September, 1987. Back

[14] Bonham and Witten, op. cit. Back

[15] Ibid. Back

[16] Darrell R. Raymond and Frank Wm. Tompa, “Hypertext and the Oxford English Dictionary,” Communications of the ACM, July, 1988. Back

[17] Mark E. Frisse, “Searching for Information in a Hypertext Medical Handbook,” Communications of the ACM, July, 1988. Back

[18] Gary Marchionini and Ben Shneiderman, “Finding Facts vs. Browsing Knowledge in Hypertext Systems,” IEEE Computer, January, 1988. Back

[19] Conklin, op. cit. Back

[20] James H. Coombs, et al., “Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing,” Communications of the ACM, November, 1987. Back

[21] Ibid. Back

[22] Tekla S. Perry, “Hypermedia: Finally Here,” IEEE Spectrum, November, 1987. Back

[23] Simon Gibbs, et al., “Muse: A Multimedia Filing System,” IEEE Software, March, 1987. Back

[24] Arch C. Luther, “You are there ... and in Control,” IEEE Spectrum, September, 1988. Back

[25] Dawn Stover, “Hypermedia,” Popular Science, May, 1989. Back

[26] John Free, “Multimedia,” Popular Science, December, 1991. Back

[27] Perry, op. cit. Back

[28] “Work Starts on Logistics Data Indexing Model Standard,” IEEE Computer, December, 1988. Back

[29] Bonham and Witten, op. cit. Back

[30] Joseph D. Becker, “Arabic Word Processing,” Communications of the ACM, July, 1987. Back

[31] G. Berton Latamore, “Dazzling Data Discs,” Popular Science, December, 1987. Back

[32] “Newstrack: Art Louvres,” Communications of the ACM, February, 1993. Back

[33] Connie Kafka, “A Marriage of the Digital and Paper Worlds,” Benchmark, Fall, 1990. Back

[34] Robert Fox, “Newstrack: Virtual Library,” Communications of the ACM, November, 1994. Back

[35] “EE’s Tools & Toys: Shelfless References,” IEEE Spectrum, January, 1988. Back

[36] Monty Kersell, “Reference Books go Online,” InfoCanada, August, 1992. Back

[37] John Free, “Electronics Newsfront: English on Disc,” Popular Science, November, 1992. Back

[38] John J. Hughes, Bits, Bytes and Biblical Studies (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987). Back

[39] See also the list of Bible software often published as an advertising supplement in Christianity Today. Back

[40] Jason D. Baker, “Review of the New Bible Library,” Christian Computing, March, 1994. Back

[41] Advertisement in Christian Computing, December, 1994. Back

[42] “HyperCard, Communication Links From Apple,” IEEE Software, November, 1987. Back

[43] “Apple HyperCard Combines Text, Graphics and Sound in a Personal Information Toolkit,” IEEE Computer, November, 1987. Back

[44] Roger E. Levien, “2001: A Document Odyssey,” Benchmark, Winter, 1989. Back

[45] David Brin, Earth (New York: Bantam, 1990), p. 199. Back

[46] For example, a search technique has been developed which can read through 100 million characters in around 10 seconds and find articles (or any other text aggregate such as a paragraph, chapter or book) which fits a complex set of search qualifiers. (See Jim Schefter, “Super Searcher,” Popular Science, November, 1987.) Back

[47] Douglas A. Kranch, “The Development of a Global Information System,” Information Technology and Libraries, December, 1989. Back

[48] Larry Press, “Collective Dynabases,” Communications of the ACM, June, 1992. Back

[49] James R. Chiles, “Goodbye Telephone, Hello to the new Communications Age,” Smithsonian, February, 1992. Back

[50] Conklin, op. cit. Back

[51] “North America Online,” IEEE Spectrum, December, 1987. Back

[52] Hiroshi Inose and John R. Pierce, Information Technology and Civilization (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1984), p. 226. Back

[53] “EE’s Tools & Toys: CD ROM Stores a Heap of Abstracts,” IEEE Spectrum, April, 1991. Back

[54] Diane Butler, Future Work: Where to find Tomorrow’s High Tech Jobs Today (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), p. 80. Back

[55] “Optical Disk may Preserve Millions of National Archive Documents,” Infosystems, July, 1987. Back

[56] Robert Langreth, “Computers and Software: Bits of Books: Libraries go Digital,” Popular Science, April, 1994. Back

[57] John A. Adam, “Multimedia Repository,” IEEE Spectrum, March, 1993. Back

[58] John Free, “Electronics Newsfront: Columbus on Discs,” Popular Science, October, 1992. Back

[59] Richard Comerford, “The Multimedia Drive,” IEEE Spectrum, April, 1994. Back

[60] Lawrence O’Gorman and Rangachar Kasturi, “Document Image Analysis Systems,” IEEE Computer, July, 1992. Back

[61] “Newstrack: Legal Manoeuvres,” Communications of the ACM, May, 1993. Back

[62] Adam, op. cit. Back

[63] Harvey Wheeler, The Virtual Library: The Electronic Library Developing Within The Traditional Library, Doheny Documents, USC University Library (Los Angeles: By the author, 1987), p. 38. Back

[64] John P. Barlow, “Electronic Frontier: Will Japan Jack In?” Communications of the ACM, October, 1992. Back

[65] Eric R. Chabrow, “The Internet’s Apostle of Free Content Esther Dyson says copying on the Net is too easy. Her solution: Charge for ads and services.” Information Wee, March 25, 1996. Back

[66] Anthony Smith, Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 75. Back

[67] James Martin, The Wired Society (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978), p. 66. Back

[68] Gary Stix, “Further References: An Electronic Journal Adds a New Dimension to Reporting research,” Scientific American, February, 1992. Back

[69] “The 90s Electronic Underground Press,” IEEE Spectrum, March, 1992. Back

[70] Inose and Pierce, op. cit., p. 90. Back

[71] “New Electronic Publishing Technology to Combine Hypermedia and AI,” Communications of the ACM, August, 1988. Back

[72] Guy A. Story, et al., “The RightPages Image-Based Electronic Library for Alerting and Browsing,” IEEE Computer, September, 1992. Back

[73] Wheeler, op. cit, p. 43. Back

[74] Gary Stix, “Trends in Scientific Communication: The Speed of Write,” Scientific American, December, 1994. Back

[75] Martin, op. cit., p. 118. Back

[76] Smith, op. cit., p. xiii. Back

[77] Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash (New York: Bantam, 1992), pp. 20-21. Back

[78] Peter J. Denning and Bernard Rous, “The ACM Electronic Publishing Plan,” Communications of the ACM, April, 1995. Back

[79] Robin Nelson, “Swept Away by the Digital Age,” Popular Science, November, 1993. Back

[80] Gio Wiederhold, “Digital Libraries, Value, and Productivity,” Communications of the ACM, April, 1995. Back

[81] Smith, op. cit., pp. 116-117. Back

[82] Denning and Rous, op. cit. Back

[83] Gary Stix, “Trends in Scientific Communication: The Speed of Write,” Scientific American, op. cit. Back

[84] “David Godfrey, and Douglas Parkhill (eds.), Gutenberg Two (Toronto: Press Porcepic Ltd., 1985), p. 145. Back

[85] Smith, op. cit., p. 118. Back

[86] See also: “New Electronic Publishing Technology to Combine Hypermedia and AI,” op. cit. Back

[87] See also: Denning and Rous, op. cit. Back

[88] Smith, op. cit., p. 118. Back

[89] Stix, “Trends in Scientific Communication: The Speed of Write,” Scientific American, op. cit. Back

[90] “Intellectual ‘Superhighway System’ Foreseen Developing Across the US,” IEEE Computer, November, 1987. Back

[91] Wendy G. Rohm, “The Last Bastion of Resistance,” Infosystems, April, 1987. Back

[92] Smith, op. cit., p. xii. Back

[93] Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two (New York: Ballantine Books, 1982), p. 21. Back

[94] Miriam A. Drake, “The Online Information System at Georgia Institute of Technology,” Information Technology and Libraries, June, 1989. Back

[95] Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions: A Skeptic’s View of Our High-Tech Future (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 77. Back

[96] Deborah C. Sawyer, “Notes on a Revolution: Or Why the People Would Rather Eat Cake,” NOW, December, 1981. Back

[97] Butler, op. cit., p. 227. Back

[98] T. S. Eliot, “Choruses From ‘The Rock’,” Selected Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), p. 107. Back

[99] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), p. 193. Back

[100] Catherine Gildiner, “Banning Books at the Library,” Globe and Mail, May 6, 1993. Back

[101] L. Wayne Rhodes, Jr., “A Foolhardy Assumption,” Infosystems, November, 1987. Back

[102] The Electronic Bible Society founded in July 1993 is an example of an organization which is creating digital versions of hundreds of classics in CD-ROM format. Back

[103] Already available, for example, in the CDWord product for the IBM PC compatible computer. Back

[104] David Neff, “Recovering the Erased Gospels,” Christianity Today, October 3, 1987. Back

[105] Roland Kenneth Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), p. 212. Back

[106] Raymond Dillard, “Notes on Computing,” Westminster Theological Journal, Spring, 1987). Back

[107] D. A. Carson and Paul A. Miller, “Notes on Computing: Report on the GRAMCORD Project,” Westminster Theological Journal, Fall, 1987). Back

[108] Hughes, op. cit. Back

[109] Dillard, op. cit. Back

[110] Carson and Miller, op. cit. Back

[111] See also the list of Bible software often published as an advertising supplement in Christianity Today. Back

[112] “By One Hand? — Computers Reread Genesis,” Time, July 12, 1981. Back

[113] Moises Silva, “Notes on Computing: Book review,” Westminster Theological Journal, Fall, 1987. Back

[114] HyperBible advertisement, Christianity Today, September 12, 1988. Back

[115] Recall that I have argued that serious reading will essentially die out among the general population, and may die out even among intellectuals. When I speak of writing think of ‘information dissemination’ and when I speak of reading think of ‘information gathering’. Back

[116] N. Adams, “Smithsonian horizons,” Smithsonian, April 1989. Back