In the future, there will be statues of Brewster Kahle. I never cease to be humbled by his ambition.
Technologists have promised the digital library for decades. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who was technology adviser to several US presidents, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine outlining how computers might one day augment libraries. Then in 1960, a young graduate called Ted Nelson got sidetracked from his masters degree in sociology at Harvard into writing text-retrieval software. He published his ideas, and coined the term “hypertext” in 1965. So in many ways the digital library is long overdue.”
Brewster Kahle, interviewed in New Scientist
He’s preserving the web – all of it – in parallel libraries of hard disks, one of which is in Alexandria. This is an unconditionally noble project, on a truly grand scale. Any arguments?
By the way, why is it New Scientist that carries interviews like this and not to the Internet press? Come to think of it, is there an Internet press?