While Dan Cohen was looking at nineteenth-century books in Google’s massive digitization project realised that despite our perception of Google as a collection of computer geniuses, and despite their use of advanced scanning technology, their library project involves an almost unfathomable amount of physical labor. And witness to that stand some screenshots of his encounters while browsing the pages of a Victorian edition of Plato’s Euthyphron, a dialogue about the origin and nature of piety.

The good professor concluded “I’m glad that here and there, the people doing this difficult work (or at least their fingers) are being immortalized”. After all the root of the word “digitization” is “digit,” which is from the Latin word “digitus,” meaning finger.

And I would agree with him, but this next one I think actually contradicts the very goal of the project altogether if this is the preservation and accessibility of the original texts.

You be the judge! There are plenty more examples in Plato’s Euthyphron and in others.
And if you are curious (as I were) on how an actual book scanner works here’s a video of one in action.

Why make a search engine that loads in just a second or two like Google, when you can make a really annoying search engine designed completely in flash with lots of video animations. Arm yourself with patience and check out this unusual search engine called Ms. Dewey.

Annoyingly slow and pointless – but not without style (if you’re a web designer) & powered by LiveSearch, MS. Dewey is not surprisingly another MicroSoft footle.

Visit http://www.msdewey.com (if you don’t have a DSL or faster connection don’t even think about it).