[OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

Someone needs to make a machine something like a cat scanner but that can take a 3D image of an entire book so that the pages can be singled out and OCR applied to them without damaging the book. Then we could get on much better! :-)

Bob


On Feb 15, 2012, at 7:35 AM, Bernard Devlin wrote:

> Alas, I think it is not a new phenomenon.
> 
> I am not young enough to know everything.
> -- Oscar Wilde
> 
> Whenever I walk into a large library, I feel a sense of awe in the
> physical presence of so much that I do not know, and will never know.
> Being able to click between Facebook, Google and Wikipedia is unlikely
> to instill a sense of the vastness of knowledge and the limited
> lifespan we have.  Reading about advanced ancient civilizations also
> makes me wonder at how much we have lost in terms of knowledge.
> 
> The internet is great as an instant encyclopaedia (even given the
> partiality of much of the information).  What it lacks is depth and a
> scale by which to realise one's ignorance.  Getting an overview of a
> subject on the internet, then going to a real library to read around
> it makes me appreciate the physical library even more.
> 
> But I'm not knocking the digitisation of information - I would hate to
> have to physically search through a stack of old copies of the New
> York Times going back through the last century.
> 
> There are some obscure books printed in India in the 1930s that I want
> to look up soon.  I've found physical copies, but I have no hope they
> will ever be digitised.  And that makes me wonder about what knowledge
> we will lose about our own past.
> 
> Bernard
> 
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:
>> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and NEVER form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do they eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain and suffering and even death to themselves or others?
> 
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