Future reading

The way people store and access knowledge continues to change dramatically, writes Anthony Grafton in an article titled "Future Reading" in The New Yorker. Yet Grafton says that digitization will not lead to the "infotopia" some people predict. Instead, it will be "one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive."

Grafton traces the history of knowledge collection back to the Library of Alexandria, then discusses current digitization projects and the notion of the universal library. "For now and for the foreseeable future," he concludes, "any serious reader will have to know how to travel down two very different roads simultaneously." Data streams, he says "will illuminate, rather than eliminate, books and prints and manuscripts that only the library can put in front of you."

For further information, read the full article.