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Most of you know of Johannes Gutenberg, the father of modern
printing and inventor of the movable type printing press. He revolutionized
printing and dissemination of information. Gutenberg's invention, translations
of Sanskrit, Persian and other texts from Asia are now available in all major
European languages. Mass publication of books and newspapers gave birth to
public libraries and made the world smaller. Knowledge and information was not
the domain of a select few but was accessible to anyone who could read.
Gutenberg's invention is probably the single most important invention in the
last 1,000 years.
On July 4, 1971 on the American Independence Day, Michael Stern
Hart, a 25-year-old American with a vision started Project Gutenberg and
liberated the readers from the restrictions of reading limited publications.
Today, Project Gutenberg or PG, as it is fondly referred to, is celebrating its
35th anniversary with the distribution of over 100 million e-books. Anyone,
anywhere in the world who wants to build his or her own personal library can do
so now.
What is Project Gutenberg?
Like all the great things, it started with the vision of one man, in this
case Michael S Hart. This is what he said when asked how it all started,
"It all began serendipitously. My brother's best friend was a mainframe
operator. I hung out there for air-conditioned comfort to do my homework. Then I
learned how to operate the mainframe. The Internet was brand new to us. I think
I was about 24, perhaps 25 years old."
Once he got the idea, Michael Hart didn't procrastinate or
wait around for funding. He says, "No, it sprang full fledged in that
moment when I thought about what I could do to repay the world for the computer
time I had been given. I can't tell you how or what I visualized (about) the
Internet...I just have a very vivid imagination and seem to be able to
extrapolate very far into the future in a single moment. I talked that day about
laptop computers and being able to carry the entire Library of Congress in one
hand. Of course, friends and acquaintances, all thought I was nuts, but they
helped me do it."
That is how it got started. His friends were pessimistic about
his idea, but he always believed e-books were The Next Big Thing. He finds it
funny that no one has done enough on e-books. Today, Project Guttenberg has over
50,000 volunteers and offers free e-books, music, films, videos, and audio
e-books in over 100 languages.
World e-Book Fair
Project Gutenberg organized the first virtual World e-Book Fair in July, and
it is giving away e-books, music, movies, video, and audio on the Internet at
free of cost free in over 100 languages! (http://WorldeBookFair.com). On August
11, 2006, they have given away approximately 30 mn e-books alone. If you missed
it, don't worry as you can always visit the website of PG and download your
favorite books anytime, throughout the year. Also, Project Gutenberg is holding
its second world e-book fair in October to mark the 'International Book Fair
Month' when it plans to give away over approximately 100 mn e-books apart from
films, music and videos.
Why aren't public or private libraries, which don't have the
space and have multiple copies of the same book not doing this? Hart says,
"What the brick and mortar libraries do is all too often based on politics,
otherwise you would be talking to them, and not to me. Any major library, or
even minor one, for that matter, could have spent just 1% of their budget over
the last 35 years and done far more than I, or any college, any company, any
city, and nation. The fact is that they don't want to give away free books...
They believe in a civilization based on limited distribution, but the Internet
began on a model of unlimited distribution."
Copyright & Intellectual Property Rights Safe?
Wouldn't this infringe on an author's intellectual property rights or
for that matter, copyright violation if you provide information on free of cost?
Hart replies, "Most of our works are in the public domain and a small
percentage is done with permission." Books in the public domain means that
they don't have a copyright notice anymore or the publisher or the author didn't
bother to renew the copyright. In addition, copyright laws and definition of
intellectual property rights vary from country to country and therefore people
working for PG have to cross-check with several countries to make sure the book
is in the public domain in that particular language. Hart says, "Before the
Gutenberg Press, the average person owned zero books. Before Project Gutenberg
the average person owned zero libraries." This couldn't be truer and the
average person gets to have her or his personal library for free!
Revolutionizing Education
PG is more relevant today than ever as their motto is 'Break down the Bars
of Ignorance and Illiteracy'. In a shrinking and increasingly globalized
world, with different ethnic cultures and increasing violence, only books will
make a difference in understanding each other. Also, with so many underdeveloped
and developing countries, containing the major chunk of the world population,
access to information and knowledge is extremely important. Take countries in
Asia or Africa for example. Most schools and colleges don't have well stocked
libraries or lots of computers. Even in India, which is considered to be an IT
power, only less than 10% of the population has personal computers. So, just
imagine, one computer in each school or even in each village with Internet
access can download over 30,000 e-books, creating a village library for free of
cost service to the entire village. Some of the books can be printed out and
distributed. For the illiterate masses, PG provides audio e-books in their
vernacular medium-be it classics or the alphabet of the language!
There will never be a person or institution to claim that they
cannot afford the books for education. PG is the best plan to eradicate
illiteracy than the grandiose million-dollar ventures that most of our
governments or MNCs start with much fanfare but within a couple of years seem to
vanish. PG is doing this for free and with almost no fanfare for over 35 years!
This is a silent revolution and it is changing the world.
Michael Hart has bigger and more exciting plans, "What
about the billions of cell phones? And, there are a billion new cell phones made
each year, not to mention iPods, PDAs, PPCs, etc. I predict that cell phones
will provide as many e-book reading experiences as computers. E-books will
change the world and the literacy rate, as much as The Gutenberg Press did half
a millennium ago. Mark my words!"
The Road Ahead
While the original PG started in the US, with books under the US public
domain and under US copyright law, today, there are PG groups in Europe and
Australia. The proofreaders live in all parts of the world.
PG is likely to help and bring people of diverse culture
together than the world governments combined. Now 60-years-old, Michael Hart is
not only more committed, but his vision for the future is exciting, "I
predict the Next Big Thing will be machine translation, and that there will be
over 10 mn e-books freely available, and that these will come out in
translations in over 100 languages, for a total of a billion books, all free...unless
someone manages to take over e-books. If we can give those billion e-books to a
billion people that would be one quintillion e-books given away. No reason to
say we can't, if things continue as they have for Project Gutenberg."
So, watch out for the second world book fair and if you wish to
help either by donating money or through proof reading texts or would like to
participate in some way, use the following websites to contact them: There is
the original PG website, the PG Consortia Center, the proofreaders' website,
apart from the world e-book fair and other related sites.
The possibilities are endless, if you are a social entrepreneur.
If you just like reading, have fun and happy reading, watching or listening,
whichever is your preferred format.
Michael Hart and his increasing team of volunteers have made the
proverb-'An idea can change the world'-a reality.
Deepa Kandaswamy
The author is the founder-moderator of the IndianWISE e-group
mail@dqindia.com Page(s) 1
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