Here's a pic of their webmaster out on the town for a quick nosh.
Posted on 05/06/2005 7:20:34 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
PARIS: The world according to Google? Europeans have long bemoaned the influence of Hollywood movies on their culture. Now plans by Google to create a massive digital library have triggered such strong fears in Europe about Anglo-American cultural dominance that one critic is warning of a "unilateral command of the thought of the world”.
For Europeans, the fear is that the continent's contribution to the pillars of recorded knowledge will be crushed by a profit-oriented California company – and may end up presenting a US-centric version of the world's literary legacy.
Google's ambitions are grand – if a bit more modest than the hostile corporate takeover of the tiller of world literature that many critics seem to be imagining.
The project, announced in December, involves scanning millions of books at the libraries of four universities – Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan – as well as the New York Public Library and putting them online. It will take years to complete.
So great is the concern that six European leaders have jointly proposed creating a "European digital library" to counter the project by Google Print, as the new venture is known. Other countries are expected to come on board.
Failing to digitalise – declared the heads of state in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Hungary in an appeal to the European Union – is to risk that "this heritage could, tomorrow, not fill its just place in the future geography of knowledge”.
Jean-Noel Jeanneney – who as president of the French National Library oversees a collection of 13 million books – presented a vision of Google potentially hijacking "the thought of the world" in a book he published this week entitled, When Google Challenges Europe .
"I think that this could lead to an imbalance to the benefit of a mainly Anglo-Saxon view of the world," Jeanneney said in a telephone interview. "I think this is a danger."
He noted that French cinema thrives only because the government took steps to ensure its survival against an American onslaught.
Peering into the future, the critics see an age where if you can't be found on Google you're nobody. That may be OK for the likes of Dante and Shakespeare, but many fear lesser known authors would suffer.
"There is increasing concern, I think, that something not registered on the Net will not be seen as existing," Hungarian Culture Minister Andras Bozoki said in an interview during a European culture forum this week in Paris. A European project would provide a "voice" for smaller countries and their literature, he added.
While giants of Hungarian literature, for instance, are most certainly on the shelves of the libraries on Google's digitization list, they might not make the cut in the selection process - or perhaps only do so in translation. Or take, for example, the 19th century writer Cyprian Norwid, a favorite of the late Pope John Paul II. Will Google provide his poetry in the original Polish?
Many works that the French consider sources of cultural inspiration for Europe and beyond could also miss the cut in a market-oriented selection system, Jeanneney said.
Jeanneney, a historian, envisions a European search engine "at the service of culture" rather than a simple "juxtaposition" of books.
However, he also raised the possibility of bringing Google into the European project, and Google Print representatives met Tuesday in Paris with French National Library officials.
"We asked an enormous number of questions," said Agnes Sall, the library's director general. "All of this is part of a very rich debate."
Google said it is eager to work with libraries all over the world so that even more books can be included in its search engine index.
"We are supportive of all digitization efforts because we believe everyone benefits when more information is available online," said Susan Wojcicki, the company's director of product development. US libraries already are contributing a significant amount of material written in foreign languages, Wojcicki added.
So far, up to 23 national libraries in the European Union's 25 member states have said they want a European search engine. However, all the governments have not yet signed on – a critical step toward obtaining the enormous funding that would be borne by the EU.
There have been critics of the European digitisation proposal, too.
Pierre Buhler, an associate professor at the prestigious National Foundation of Political Science, wrote in an April 29 commentary in the International Herald Tribune that Jeanneney is off the mark.
"What he called for was no less than the first culture war in cyberspace," Buhler wrote.
I can see why Europe would be upset. As an American, so am I!! The Net doesn't get much more liberal than Google!
There's even a boycott going on now against Google for it's extreme liberal slant.
Yeah I heard about this version it will be hosted at www.euroweenie.net and the mirror site will be www.cheeseeatingsurrendermonkey.org
Several major university libraries began digitizing their collections several years ago.
This concept is not new. The Euros are just whining because it is a US company that is doing it.
Here's a pic of their webmaster out on the town for a quick nosh.
Currently there are articles claiming that google intends to arrange search results according to "quality" of the source such as news media. Guess who's quality and who ain't.
It does not concern me personally that the billionaire boys give almost exclusively to Rats. But..
Imposing "quality" standards is akin to information management and is IMO just a fancy form of the spike.
Apparently kowtowing to the Chi-coms gave them billionaire liberals some ideas about what the "masses" needed to know and what was too socially "divisive" and unfa-a-a-a-a-a-air.
www.google.com/googleblog/2004/09/china-google-news-and-source-inclusion.html
goo- goo- google, good bye!
(Sell your shares now, boys. They ain't going to be worth much in a few years, I bet.)
They make it sound like a threat!
Hey, that's great - just do it - beat google to it - just stop complaining.
They're so worried about their precious culture and language. Obviously if it was so great it wouldn't have to be constantly propped up by government decrees!
Having said that, I'm all in favor of getting all the books in the world digitized - it's inevitable.
Really? Take a look at the worldwide moneymakers and how many French made movies are there. I suspect government handouts (bad money) doing their usual damage upon the french film industry.
Google is run by far left morons though.
Why does France always try to copy cat what US does. It really makes them look stupid.
Yea, they're "morons".
I find it interesting that these European leaders, upon learning that a private American company has launched a very ambitious project, want to compete by getting their governments embarked on a similar project.
When will they learn--America leads the way in technology because we manage to (mostly) keep government out of the process and let private enterprise lead the way? When will they ever learn?
Well, I emphatically do not think an Anglo-Saxon view of the world, or even an imbalance which "benefits" that view represents any danger at all either to Europe and any other part of the world. To the contrary, one can trace the betterment of the condition of mankind to the ascendancy of the Anglo-Sanon world view. In fact, one can trace (as one author has) in parallel such advancements with the suzerainty of first the British navy and then of our own American navy.
Thank God Britania ruled the waves. Thank God for Nelson at Trafalgar. Thank God for Nimitz and Midway.
With the primacy of the Anglo-Saxon navies came the "ascendancy of the Anglo-Saxon worldview." And that means a rule of law, a code of justice, a representative government checked by a viable constitution, a respect for the individual against the mob or the state, a respect for property (indespespensible to real freedom),love of liberty and a wholesome fear of God. It also means that words have meaning and that society cannot operate well without a reverence for truth, characteristics often lacking in greater excess in the non Anglo-Saxon world.
What the world needs now, to coin a phrase, is more of the Anglo-Saxon worldview. One could start at the UN - I believe it is within range of our navy.
A few days ago Chirac got on Frog television to whup up the left to pass the EU constitution. To demonstrate that we are in a real struggle with a Gallic or Jacobin view of the world which found its apogee (or nadir) in the halocoust authored by Lenin-Stalin-Mao Tse Dong, here are some excerpts from the article posted here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1396059/posts) which should leave no reader in doubt that the French left is at war with Anglo-Saxon values:
Chirac hits TV airwaves for second time to defend EU constitution
PARIS (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac, buoyed by polls that show the 'yes' camp gaining ground ahead of the EU constitution referendum, appealed to skeptical left-leaning voters to support the text.
The constitution is "neither on the right nor the left", Chirac said in an interview with two journalists from state-owned France 2, his second live television appearance in defense of the treaty ahead of the May 29 referendum.
He called the text the "daughter of 1989", the year the Berlin Wall fell, and <"especially the daughter of 1789", referring to the French Revolution, because it embraces "all the values of France".
"This constitution is essentially of French inspiration," Chirac said, adding that it was "the best possible constitution for France".
The center-right French leader said the treaty, aimed at simplifying decision-making in the expanded European Union, would mark "a decisive step toward a more socially conscious situation" in the bloc.
"This constitution combines the demands of a large market with the demands of social harmonization," he said.
"We are creating a united Europe of states and people, and not at all a United States of Europe."
His arguments seemed specifically aimed at winning over left-wing voters, who remained the most unpersuaded about the merits of the constitution and were tempted to cast a protest vote against his government.
....
He reiterated warnings that a 'no' vote would halt 50 years of European constitution and diminish France's influence abroad.
(emphasis supplied)
This is why I thank God for Trafalgar, no less than for the victory in the Battle of The Atlantic.
Folks, we are at war for Anglo-Saxon values against Jacobite values, whatever label we affix to them today. The French, at least, know that the cold war was only a skirmish in that everlasting struggle.
Jacobite =jacobin
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