Forget Barnes & Noble eReader: Google Books now supports epub format Sunday, September 27, 2009
Posted by librarygary in Culture, History of the Book, Mobile Web, e-Books.add a comment
My wife and I enjoy watching foreign, independent, and small production house movies—basically anything that’s not Hollywood. A topic frequently dealt with in the movies we gravitate toward (as recommended by Netflix) involves the struggles faced by immigrant persons and families as they try to negotiate the unfamiliar social and cultural environment of a foster or adopted homeland. The other evening we watched a movie entitled The Namesake, which again dealt with this topic.
The movie was pretty good. But what does this have to do with Google Books? Well, the plot of the movie swirled around the name of a nineteenth century Russian author, a certain Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. I was so intriqued by this Gogol fellow (I confess that I had never heard about him before) that after the movie was over I immediately got out my laptop computer and searched for information about him, and for some stuff he had written. After learning that Gogol lived and wrote in the nineteenth century, I wondered if I could find anything he had written among the public domain titles at Google Books. Sure enough, after a quick search I found a 1917 Alfred A. Knopf edition of Tarus Bulba: A Tale of the Cossacks, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. Cool. (Hmm, that’s interesting—finding Gogol on Google.)
I knew I could download the book as a pdf, and this would be fine for reading on my computer. But as I earlier described, pdfs are not ideal for reading on small screen mobile hand-held devices like my iPod touch. When I clicked on the download link for Tarus Bulba in Google Books, I noticed something new. In addition to pdf, I was also given the option of downloading the book in epub format.
Epub is a rapidly developing open standard based on XML for the creation, publishing, and distribution of reflowable digital books and publications. A significant barrier to e-book adoption in the market (and society at large) today is the proliferation of proprietary and high-priced devices coupled with inflexible file format support. The promise of epub as a file format standard is device independence. Although issues remain (e.g., digital rights management, including use and re-use rights for book buyers, etc.), with a standard electronic book format authors and publishers can at least get past the uncertainty of volatile and competing delivery technologies. The book itself can easily adapt as needed to life on a reader’s cellphone, media player, hand-held, tablet, or desktop computer.
That Google Books is supporting epub in its public domain offerings is an exciting development, and a neat discovery. I have been so busy that I missed the announcement from Google on August 26. Of the roughly 1.5 million public domain titles on Google Books, over 1 million are now accessible and downloadable in epub format. Wow!
I will spend more time watching the development and adoption of the epub standard. But an immediate consequence of Google making its epub versions publicly downloadable is that I no longer have to make use of the Barnes & Noble eReader work-around. I was never really happy about that. I endured it as the only option at the time. In order to use it, I had to create a Barnes & Noble online account, give a credit card number, search for and “purchase” books (even though they were free) through their online store interface, and then read the books with their commercially branded reader.
To be clear, you still cannot download books (in either pdf or epub) from the browser-based Google Books site on your mobile device. The mobile site is browse, search, and read online only, and requires an active internet connection. However, there is a free software solution on the iPhone/iPod touch, an epub compatible e-book reader called Stanza that can establish a direct download connection with Google Books. (There is also a desktop version of Stanza available for reading and syncing content between your computer and iPod.)
When you launch Stanza you see a Library of previously downloaded Titles, Authors, etc. To access more books, click on the Online Catalog button. This takes you to a pre-installed list of commercial and free e-book sources.
Click on the “+” button to add a link to Google Books.
Click “Add Web Page,” type “Google Books,” add the URL, and then click Save. Google Books is now added to your e-book source list in Stanza. Click this link to launch Google Books within Stanza.
Since you are viewing Google Books as a web page you will have to zoom in to navigate around to the search box and genre lists. For convenience of this demo, I simply clicked on the link to an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra that came up under Classics.
Zoom in and click on the EPUB download link. Stanza will ask you to confirm by clicking on the “Download” button.
In a moment the downloaded e-book will be added to your Library within Stanza. It’s that easy. Read at your leisure.
At a later point I will offer a more in-depth review of Stanza. (For example, Amazon Kindle readers will be interested to know that the desktop version of Stanza can convert epub into Kindle compatible book files!) Not having a mobile version of Google Books from which to download e-books in Stanza is a minor annoyance. But it is far easier and less icky than having to mess with Barnes & Noble for free books.
Barnes & Noble eReader: A round-about way to read public domain Google Books offline on your mobile device Sunday, August 2, 2009
Posted by librarygary in History of the Book, Mobile Computing, Mobile Web, e-Books.1 comment so far
I just downloaded the Barnes & Noble eReader application for my iPod touch (link connects to App Store in iTunes). I don’t know if I should be saying this so directly, but the most exciting prospect for this application isn’t so much the ability to purchase e-books from Barnes & Noble. Rather, it’s that I now have a way to access and download among the hundreds of thousands of public domain e-books on Google Book Search. In an attempt to do a one-up on Amazon’s Kindle e-book service (which also has its own iPod/iPhone application [review forthcoming]), Barnes & Noble has teamed with Google to make 500,000 of its public domain titles available for free download through their online store.
In an earlier post I told you about the mobile-aware web page Google has provided to access Google Book Search public domain titles via your device’s browser. Although an awesome resource, I indicated one major limitation—you can’t download books to your device. All reading must be done online from within the browser. If I’m not near a wifi hotspot, I’m out of luck. (Computer users of Google Book Search have always been able to download complete public domain e-books as pdfs. I have several apps for uploading and viewing pdfs from my computer to iPod. But pdf files do not reformat on the iPod’s small screen. Scrolling and zooming of larger files is a real pain, and the reading experience is not ideal.)
Now it would seem that Barnes & Noble has come to my rescue. (Google and Sony did a similar deal for the Sony Reader back in March.) The end-product is pretty good. But considering my primary intention (getting free e-books from Google onto my iPod), the process is strangely round-about. Here is what I had to do to get started:
1) I launched the eReader app. The reader was preloaded with a couple of free books (Last of the Mohicans and Little Women), and looked very similar to the eReader app I already had on my iPod distributed by Fictionwise, Inc. (a Barnes & Noble company, incidentally).
2) I clicked on “Shop for eBooks,” which launched the Barnes & Noble online store in my web browser. I quickly discovered that before I could download any books, even free titles, I had to create an account. This required that I provide a credit card number. I initially felt mildly offended by this. “Why should I have to provide a credit card number to download free books?” But then it dawned on me that Barnes & Noble (and also Google for that matter) is trying to run a business, not give away books (duh!).
3) All searching and browsing happens through the B&N online store in the browser. I can do this from my iPod, or my computer. I decided to search for Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
4) The search results default to “Top Matches.” Notice that the first several hits in this search are not free. I can scroll through all the results. But (here’s a tip) if I re-sort the results by “Price” it brings the free titles to the top of the list.
5) Notice the badge “From Google Books” under the free titles. I scroll down until I find a copy of the edition I’m after, and click “Get Free eBook.” If I’m not already signed into my B&N account, I will be prompted to do so. I confirm my purchase. I also receive an email with the purchase confirmation. When I relaunch Barnes & Noble eReader, I see the book downloaded to my local library. I click on the title and start reading! Best of all, the book resides on my iPod. I can read it any time. No internet connection required.
Images and scans (e.g., title pages) are downloaded as is, and cannot be reformatted. However, text in the eReader can be formatted to a different font and size, etc. to facilitate ease of reading. (More on this if I decide to write a general review about the Barnes & Noble eReader and online store in another post.)
It still feels weird to have one commercial entity serve as an intermediary for another commercial entity as a way for me to get free content. I’m pretty used to this from Google because they have built their business model around ad-supported content and paid premium services. But how will Barnes & Noble views this? I mean, if I just download free e-books all the time, and never actually spend any money, will I start getting nasty email from them threatening to cut me off? I’ll let you know.
Applying Diffusion of Innovation theory to the adoption of the codex book form: An analogy for understanding e-book adoption? Saturday, March 14, 2009
Posted by librarygary in Culture, History of the Book, Nature of Information, e-Books.add a comment
PROLOGUE
The following is the text of a proposal I prepared in 2004 for a Research Methods course while a graduate student in the School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona (Tucson). I offer it here as a follow-up to my post of February 22, 2009: “When you’re used to paper rolls it takes some time to convert to turning pages of a book.”
The proposal is entitled “Christians and the Codex: ‘Early Adopters’ of New Media Technology.” It appears from available manuscript evidence of the first few centuries of the Common Era that Christian communities—as a minority social group—showed a distinct preference for the codex book form than what was true for majority Roman society. It is a question of some interest why this was so, and has led to further questions into what role, if any, these Christian communities may have played in contributing to the eventual diffusion and adoption of the codex into majority society, and its subsequent triumph as the ubiquitous book form we know today. Many scholars have pursued answers to these questions. My purpose was to possibly offer another methodological lens for looking at the problem. Of course, I was spared the real hard work because the assignment was to develop the proposal, not conduct the actual research.
I find these historical and cultural questions intriguing in their own right, and maybe one day I will get around to some of that research work. At the moment, the most compelling aspect—as I introduced in my earlier post—is to try to imagine, by analogy, the dynamic at play as we consider adoption of the e-book as a new book form technology.
Harry Y. Gamble, Professor in Religious Studies at University of Virginia, a scholar who has inquired into these questions, and whose writing informed my proposal, later captured the essence of that dynamic (though working in reverse) when he wrote:
The gradual transition in Western Antiquity from the time-honored bookroll to the codex followed upon and imitated the popularity of the leaf-book in early Christianity, and specifically in connection with the formation of the Christian Bible. This was a monumental change in the history of the book. In significance it is sometimes compared to the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century…But the transition to the codex is perhaps more aptly compared to the advent of electronic texts in the late twentieth century, which even now is revolutionizing the way texts are made, accessed, and stored. In both cases we have to do with a major change in the format of texts, and consequently in the means of producing and using them. It may well be that for readers of the not-to-distant future the word “book” will automatically conjure the meaning “e-book” rather than the leaf-book that it suggests to us, or the bookroll that it designated in pre-Christian Antiquity. (Bible and book. In M. P. Brown (Ed.), In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000 (p. 16, emphasis mine). Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (distributed by Smithsonian Books), 2006.)
It turns out that a clear and definitive answer to the question of why early Christians preferred the codex book form continues to evade scholarship. Even a recent work by Larry Hurtado (The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2006) ultimately disappoints. After insightfully critiquing the proposals of others, Hurtado himself sends us away largely empty-handed. Toward the end of a section entitled: Why Did Christians Prefer the Codex? Hurtado writes: “It is not my primary purpose here to argue for a particular answer to the questions involved…[M]y main emphasis in this discussion is that the early Christian use of the codex is an important matter worthy of attention by all scholars concerned with Christian origins” (pp. 80-81). O-O-O-K…
Maybe the question is unanswerable given the current state of our knowledge. The physical evidence in favor of the codex is indisputable. But motivational questions (Why?) are notoriously difficult for historians to answer. My research proposal would likely lead to a similar dead-end. But still I wondered whether a social-scientific approach might yield a different way of looking at the available evidence.
I decided to share my proposal essentially as I wrote it in 2004. I would be interested in your comments. Compared to five years ago, I think I am now very much more interested in wondering if a diffusion of innovation study on the adoption of the codex book form could provide us with any insights into the process of how the e-book might gain ascendancy as the book form of choice in our society. Notice my reference to reading an e-book at the time—George Orwell’s 1984—on a Palm handheld device! I think I meant that to be vaguely ironic.
“When you’re used to paper rolls it takes some time to convert to turning pages of a book.” Sunday, February 22, 2009
Posted by librarygary in Computers, Culture, History of the Book, Mobile Computing, Mobile Web, Nature of Information, Software, e-Books.add a comment
“Medieval Helpdesk” sketch from the Øystein og jeg show on Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), 2001.
Here is the medieval equivalent of the IT guy making a house call (in true Geek Squad fashion) to help walk a frustrated user through a new piece of technology. The situation is familiar to most people (especially those of us over a certain age), though the time-shift takes us off guard. That’s what makes the sketch so hilarious. Familiarity in an unfamiliar context. As a non-Norwegian-speaking person, I find this “familiarity in the midst of unfamiliarity” dynamic enhanced even further.
I imagine that many people watching this video will, in fact, identify with the described situation while thinking of an analogous modern situation, such as learning to use a computer, a new piece of software, or the latest consumer electronics gadget. But as a librarian, I am interested in the described situation itself. Although the historical time-frame is off slightly, the sketch allows me to imagine the cultural, intellectual, and (even) emotional processing that accompanied the technological transition in the form of the book from roll/scroll to codex.
With the benefit of this perspective, I can then extrapolate some of the processing required as we are once again approaching a credible point of transition in book form from paper to electronic (i.e., the so-called e-book). I am not interested in speculating about the imminent demise of the ink on paper book, which I do not see. Rather, and at the risk of over-analyzing a two-and-a-half minute bit of humor, I am interested in thinking about human interaction with and reactions to technology at points of significant technological transition, such as the maturing of the e-book format, which I do think is now well underway.
The “familiarity in the midst of unfamiliarity” dynamic of the sketch allows us the space to see, by analogy, that the form of the book we all take for granted was itself a technological innovation that encountered significant resistance to adoption in the presence of an existing and presumably satisfactory alternative—the book roll. Vocal detractors to the codex as an appropriate form for literary texts were well known in first and second century Roman society.
Brother Ansgar says, “When you’re used to paper rolls it takes some time to convert to turn[ing] pages of a [book].” Familiarity to the point of taking a technology for granted is a key point exposed in the sketch and shouldn’t be missed. Adoption of any technology by a society and individuals within that society becomes complete when that technology effectively disappears as a technology—it becomes ubiquitous. That is why technological developments that disturb ubiquity are frequently met with resistance. After fifteen hundred plus years it’s easy to forget that the printed book as we have it today is still a technology, an invented thing that hasn’t always been.
Notice how this ubiquity is reflected in modern language usage. Here is a definition for the word “codex” from the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (2005):
Notice the phrases “in book form” and “hence a book.” The definition is offered from the standpoint of “everyone knows (is familiar with) what a book is, and a codex is like a book in its form.” This definition is not untrue. But this usage reinforces identification with what is ubiquitous, and inadvertently contributes to resistance to change. How can an e-book be a real book? I imagine that a literate person in second century Rome would vigorously reject this dictionary definition. He or she would say that while a codex might be fine for keeping a grocery list, or for children to use to practice their alphabet, it is definitely not a book! “Would you read Virgil’s Aeneid on a grocery list?!” How far off is this, really, from someone today saying, “Would you read Virgil’s Aeneid off a computer screen?!”?
I have gone to persistent pains in this post to talk about the roll/scroll, codex, printed book, and e-book as book forms. I will even throw-in a text inscribed on a clay tablet as an authentic book form. Literate Akkadians or Babylonians certainly thought so as they read the Epic of Gilgamesh! I disagree, however, with the notion that a book is only about content. It does seem significant that a book needs to have a form—needs to be in some sense a discrete object that exists as a container for its associated content. But why can’t that discrete object be a digital file accessible in virtual space at the click of a mouse, or the touch of a screen?
I know there are a raft of conscious and unconscious, social and conventional, personal and emotional associations that build-up over time to authorize a book form as ‘real’ and authentic (e.g., the dictionary definition above). But these associations are learned, as the use of any technology is learned. From the safe distance of several centuries we can laugh at Brother Ansgar for his technological difficulty with something that, to us, is so obvious. But if we laugh we’re really only laughing at ourselves. If a codex can become a ‘real’ book even if at one time it was not deemed to be so, then by analogy an e-book should be able to acquire a similar authorization. It’s just a question of time.
UPDATE: While writing this post I stumbled across an article by John Siracusa on Ars Technica entitled, “The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age.” Siracusa was involved with efforts in the 1990s to get e-books adopted into the publishing and reading mainstream. Although I disagree with his contention that the book is format agnostic, and only about content, his article is otherwise very illuminating and well-worth a read. I may interact with Siracusa’s article further in a subsequent post because he addresses some of the common technological issues that have hampered the pace of wide-spread e-book adoption (like the Medieval Helpdesk producing their user manual for the codex in codex form! “Oh. We hadn’t thought about that.”).
Plato, the invention of writing, and the e-book Monday, January 19, 2009
Posted by librarygary in Culture, Information Literacy, Nature of Information, e-Books.add a comment
The following is a two-part email I sent to my good friend and colleague (he is chair of the faculty Library Committee) on March 27 and 29, 2006, after he sent me an editorial written by Edward Tenner in The New York Times, entitled “Searching for Dummies” (March 26, 2006). My friend is a history professor and an avid bibliophile. Though he has largely “come around” to my way of thinking regarding the benefits of electronic delivery of journal literature, he is far more resistive when it comes to surrendering the marvelous technology expressed as the printed book. He knows he has been socialized into this preference, but insists that a full embrace of computer and electronic information resource technology is damaging his students’ capacity to think through complex ideas in a sustained and deep way. I retort that our task should not be rejection of the technology but the instruction into its proper use, and building an awareness (understanding) both of its advantages/limitations and its impact (both good and ill) on human culture and knowledge. In my argument I drew an analogy from another ancient technology—writing itself.
Greetings. Further to our on-going conversation (print vs. electronic information resources), here is an interesting excerpt from Plato’s Phaedrus, where Socrates tells a story of the Egyptian god Theuth, the inventor of, among other things, writing. I have not read the full piece, but it is interesting here to see Plato’s critique of the losses sustained by writing (and reading) as a new technology over oral culture and true memory.
At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters [grammata=writing]. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. Theuth came to him and showed his inventions [technas, "arts"], desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them. Thamus enquired about their several uses, and as Theuth enumerated them, Thamus praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts [technai]. But when they came to letters [grammata], Theuth said, “This invention, O King, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; I have discovered a remedy [pharmakon: potion, medicine, drug] both for the memory and for wisdom.” Thamus replied: “O most ingenious [technikotate] Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a power opposite to that which they in fact possess. For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories, but, trusting in external, foreign marks [graphes], they will not bring things to remembrance from within themselves. You have discovered a remedy [pharmakon] not for memory, but for reminding. You offer your students the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. They will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
This is all very ironic in view of our conversation. We long ago adopted the writing technology of Theuth. We frankly no longer know what we lost through its adoption, since we have lived under its ideological assumptions for so long. Neil Postman, in his book Technolopy: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Vintage, 1992) alludes to this story in rightly claiming the non-neutral and ideological function of every technology and technological adoption.
I have contended in our conversation that print books are every bit as much a technological invention of information transmission, and laden with ideology, as any book in electronic format. Postman urges caution, in deference to your concerns. I am not insensitive to these, of course. I am no heedless technophile any more than you are a heedless technophobe. My real point is offered by Postman where he writes: “[Thamus] would allow, I imagine, that a technology may be barred entry to a culture…But…once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open.” (p. 7, emphasis added)
For good or ill, electronic information technology has been admitted into our culture. Since this technology has become proliferated into every facet of our students’ lives, it no longer makes sense to bar it here at Milligan College Library as some well-meaning bulwark against the flood. That is the surest recipe for irrelevance. Yes, we can and should keep the books around and in plain sight as an act of ideological subversion. But I believe our mandate now is to fight, not by insisting that our students use the books, but by building understanding instead of heedlessness. This is the instructional role of a comprehensive program of information literacy. Data is not information; information is not knowledge; and knowledge is not yet wisdom. Wisdom comes through passionate, responsible (ethical), critical (discerning) and mature use of information, and the organization of information that forms into structures of knowledge. This, it seems to me, has always been our task. Only now we can’t take anything for granted.
* * *
Plato, by having Socrates tell this story, is engaging in a form of rhetoric. Everything here is inescapably in written form! But for Plato this is also a concession and (what we are calling “ironic” in our current conversation) really a paradox. Plato writes to critique writing! But not all writing, as not all speech, is of equal value. For Plato, writing that preserves the living dialogical (mind-to-mind conversational) nature of true human (philosophical) knowledge, and which asks more questions than it answers, is the best. Incidentally, much of Plato’s writing is construed as dialogue between great philosophical minds. But he would say that even his writing is a concession, if only because of the inherent limitations of written communication. [See Robin Waterfield’s excellent commentary on this in the section of his Introduction to Plato’s Phaedrus (Oxford World's Classics, 2002) entitled, “Dialectic and the Weakness of Writing,” pages xxxvii-xlii.]
My original allusion to this story, and giving it out as ironic, is a technical (pun intended!) misuse of Plato’s intention. But my warrant for it (as also picked-up by Neil Postman) is that Theuth is said to have invented writing. As such, writing is unmistakably recognized as a technology. As a tool, technology requires instruction for its proper use, and (because it is not value neutral) requires an awareness (understanding) of its advantages/limitations and its impact (both good and ill) on human culture and knowledge.
I think this is really the point of Plato’s critique. I imagine Plato would prefer not to use writing in human discourse because of its inherent limitations. But paradoxically, he has no choice to use writing if he wants his ideas disseminated and preserved (for reminding, not for true memory, as Thamus notes!). So, given the inherent limitations of writing, he must instruct his readers (in the guise of the highly-esteemed Socrates) into an awareness through critique of how this technology functions, and what is the most profitable writing form—the form that best preserves dialogical nature of human knowledge.
By analogy, you (and I) have come to view the writing of and reading from printed books as the best form for preserving and engaging the accumulated ideas of human knowledge. (You may quibble on my wording, but the basic gist is there, right?) We honestly believe and assume that a living conversation is still preserved within those pages for fresh engagement. We are no longer troubled by Plato’s concerns because we have come to view the book as a most acceptable means of disseminating and preserving ideas. To us, it is no longer a mere concession. Rather, it has been (for the last several thousands of years) the primary technology for this very purpose. Praise be to Theuth for his miraculous invention!
But now, after a very lengthy and productive stint with the printed form of the book, along comes a new technology that proposes a new form—an electronic/digital form. [I’m still in analogy mode here.] How do we react to this? Well, we may sense that this new technology will, to quote Thamus, “create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories, but, trusting in external, foreign [virtual!] marks, they will not bring things to remembrance from within themselves.” We offer appropriate critique. To use this new technology implies a concession (but not the same level of paradox, since it still involves the use of writing [with multimedia capabilities thrown-in]). The preferred use or non-use of this technology does not (yet?) place a person in a “I have no choice” position as it did for Plato. But the use of this technology does involve certain advantages and certain limitations. And so, the use of this technology requires instruction for its proper use, and (because it is not value neutral) requires an awareness (understanding) of its advantages/limitations and its impact (both good and ill) on human culture and knowledge.
So, I would argue that Plato makes my case—though not because he is forced (paradoxically/ironically) to use writing even while critiquing it. The analogy is not in equating the move from printed book to digital book with Plato’s paradoxical move from using a pure form of human knowledge transmission (oral communication) and preservation (memory) to a compromised form through writing and (mere) reminding. The analogy, rather, is that given the invention of the electronic/digital form of the book and its inevitable/increasing use, we now need to instruct in its proper use and build an awareness of its advantages/limitations and its cultural impact. Thamus critiqued writing at its invention (in the ancient time of the myth). Plato critiques it (as it were) after long use. Thamus could warn the god of the dire unintended consequences of its use. Plato can allude to those warnings in order to offer contemporary instruction, even as he himself uses the technology!
I would say Plato was doing a form of information literacy. And so the New York Times Op-Ed piece [Edward Tenner, "Searching for Dummies," March 26, 2006]. Information literacy is a “fighting back” strategy to the (dire?) unintended consequences of the miraculous invention called the Internet … and information resource access via electronic databases. Information literacy is instruction in the proper use and awareness-building of this new technology. What do you think?
