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They really need to work on their translation tools.
They really need to work on their translation tools.
POINT OF VIEW
When Google defies Europe, by Jean-Christmas Jeanneney
THE WORLD|22.01.05| 15h49
Here that the risk of a crushing domination of America in the definition of the idea continues that the next generations will be made world.
For the moment, the news hardly drew the attention but librarians and data processing specialists. And, however, I guarantee that one will not be long in measuring the cultural significance of it, therefore political: vast.
Google is, as one knows, the first search engine suitable to guide the Net surfers in the vastness of the Fabric. One of the first chronologically, since it goes back to 1998 (seven years, long duration in this field). The first by its success: 75 % of the search for information pass today by its intermediary. The first finally by its capital intensive weight: entered with New York Stock Exchange in June 2004, it finds there and y will find in abundance of the new resources.
However here that, December 14, this company announced with great noise that it had just made agreement with five of the most famous libraries and richest of the Anglo-Saxon world: the Public New York Library and four libraries of universities, Stanford, the university of Michigan, Harvard (the United States) and Oxford (Great Britain).
Agreement for what to make? Nothing less than to digitize in a few years 15 million works in order to make them available on line. Freely for all those which fell into the public domain, in extracts enticing for the others which are still under rights, while waiting for that time passes. Stanford and the university of Michigan will place at the disposal of Google the integrality of their collections (8 million for the first, 7 for the second); New York will give access to fragile documents which are not under copyright; Oxford with a selection of the XIX E century; Harvard being limited to a test of 40 000 documents chosen among its 15 million books.
It will act on the whole, quantifies vertiginous, of 4,5 billion pages. The initial reaction, in front of this gigantic prospect, could be of pure and simple jubilation. Here what would take form, in the short run, the Messianic dream which was defined at the end of last century: all accessible savoirs of the world free on whole planet. Thus an equal opportunity finally restored, thanks to science, to the profit of the poor countries and the underprivileged populations.
It is however necessary to look at there more closely. And are born at once from heavy concerns. Let us leave to side the deaf person concern of certain worried librarians, without daring the statement too much, with the idea to see emptying their rooms of reading; admittedly, their trade will evolve/move little by little to serve documentation of the citizens and to clarify their choices in multiple manners, but object-delivers it has too many practical advantages compared to the screen not to remain very a long time. All the experiment of the History shows that in the past none new fashions of communication replaced the precedents - supplementing only and often developing them.
The true challenge is elsewhere, and it is immense. Here that the risk of a crushing domination of America in the definition of the idea continues that the next generations will be made world. Whatever the indeed width of the spectrum announced by Google, exhaustiveness is out of attack, at human sight. Very undertaken of this kind thus imply drastic choices, among the vastness of the possible one. The libraries which will launch out in this company are certainly liberally opened with the age and works of the other countries. It does not prevent: the criteria of the choice will be strongly marked (even if we contribute ourselves, naturally without being sulky, with these richnesses) by the glance which is that of the Anglo-Saxons, with its specific colors compared to the diversity of civilizations.
I keep in memory the experiment of the Bicentenary of the Revolution, in 1989, when I directed the demonstrations from there. It had been noxious and hateful for the balance of the nation, the image and the knowledge which it had of itself, of its past, of the events, luminous or dark, that it returned to us to commemorate, to go to seek in the only English or American data bases an account and an interpretation which were skewed there in multiple ways: The Scarlet pimpernel crushing Quatre-vingt-treize , valiant British aristocrats triumphing over the sanguinary Jacobins, the guillotine occulting the humans right and the fulgurating intuitions of Convention. This example is instructive, and it warns to us.
Let us not forget, in addition, another aspect of the question, which relates to work moving: in the ocean of Internet, where all circulates, in the order of truth like forgery, the processes of validation of the products of research by the scientific authorities and the reviews take from now on an essential importance. The Anglo-Saxon scientific production, already dominant in a quantity of fields, will be some inevitably survalorized, with an advantage crushing with English compared to the other languages of culture, in particular European.
It will be said that it is not a question in fact of complete writings, since they are not, per definition, fallen in the public domain, only of extracts protecting authors and editors. But precisely: this publicity will be inevitably discriminating. Let us add that, under the appearance of the exemption from payment, the Net surfer will remunerate in fact Google, as a consumer, since the company saw to 99 % of publicity and that the step which it announces only aims at obtaining a return on investment thanks to this one. Publicities in margin of the pages and the bonds privileged will guide towards purchases which will accentuate imbalance.
When was posed, since the second world war, on the side of the cinema then of audio-visual, the question of the French response to the American domination, dedicated, if one had not reacted, to oppress on our premises any original production, an initial reaction was of protectionism, according to a system of quotas, in the rooms then with television. That was not illegitimate and was partially effective. But, in the case which occupies us, this strategy appears, taking into account the nature of the Fabric, impossible. Thus remain the second, which proved reliable on our various screens: that of the counter-attack, with a positive support for the difference.
In this business, France and its national Library have a particular responsibility towards the French-speaking world. But no European nation is, one it can, enough strong to be able to ensure only the start necessary. I will be, of course, the last to neglect the accomplished efforts: the virtual library developed by the national Library of France (BNF) under the name of Gallica - which proposes already 80 000 works on line and 70 000 images, and which will offer soon the reproduction of large French newspapers since the XIX E century - is installed with the gratitude of many researchers and citizens, and it serves our influence around the world; but it saw only State grants, inevitably limited, and our own resources, with difficulty and valiantly mobilized. Our annual expenditure amounts only to one thousandths of that announced by Google. The combat is far too unequal.
Another policy is essential. And it can be spread only on the scale of Europe. Europe decided not to be not only one market, but a center of radiant culture and political influence without similar around planet.
The hour is thus with a solemn call. It is allocated to the persons in charge for the Union, in its three major authorities, to react without delay - because, very quickly, the place being taken, the practices installed, it will be too late to move.
A multiannual plan could be defined and adopted as of this year in Brussels. A generous budget should be assured. It is while advancing on public funds that one will guarantee to the citizens and to the researchers - providing for the expenditure necessary like taxpayers and not as consumers - a protection against the perverse effects of a search for profit dissimulated behind the appearance of a satisfying.
It is by gathering initiatives of State which one will avoid that all our funds of photographic archives are repurchased by American companies (Corbis, subsidiary of Microsoft, has already much advanced in this field). It is by mobilizing the specialized laboratories that one will ensure the development of a search engine as of software tools which are ours.
Everywhere one evokes, these times, the urgency of a policy of research and an industrial policy of long term which ensure, vis-a-vis various planetary competition whose dynamism continues so extremely, a future with the originality of Europe: eh well! they is exactly of that that it acts, it is this challenge which it returns to us to face. We can it, therefore let us owe we it.
Jean-Christmas Jeanneney , old secrétaired' State with the communication, is a president of the national Library of France and Europartenaires association.
When Google defies Europe, by Jean-Christmas Jeanneney
THE WORLD|22.01.05| 15h49
Here that the risk of a crushing domination of America in the definition of the idea continues that the next generations will be made world.
For the moment, the news hardly drew the attention but librarians and data processing specialists. And, however, I guarantee that one will not be long in measuring the cultural significance of it, therefore political: vast.
Google is, as one knows, the first search engine suitable to guide the Net surfers in the vastness of the Fabric. One of the first chronologically, since it goes back to 1998 (seven years, long duration in this field). The first by its success: 75 % of the search for information pass today by its intermediary. The first finally by its capital intensive weight: entered with New York Stock Exchange in June 2004, it finds there and y will find in abundance of the new resources.
However here that, December 14, this company announced with great noise that it had just made agreement with five of the most famous libraries and richest of the Anglo-Saxon world: the Public New York Library and four libraries of universities, Stanford, the university of Michigan, Harvard (the United States) and Oxford (Great Britain).
Agreement for what to make? Nothing less than to digitize in a few years 15 million works in order to make them available on line. Freely for all those which fell into the public domain, in extracts enticing for the others which are still under rights, while waiting for that time passes. Stanford and the university of Michigan will place at the disposal of Google the integrality of their collections (8 million for the first, 7 for the second); New York will give access to fragile documents which are not under copyright; Oxford with a selection of the XIX E century; Harvard being limited to a test of 40 000 documents chosen among its 15 million books.
It will act on the whole, quantifies vertiginous, of 4,5 billion pages. The initial reaction, in front of this gigantic prospect, could be of pure and simple jubilation. Here what would take form, in the short run, the Messianic dream which was defined at the end of last century: all accessible savoirs of the world free on whole planet. Thus an equal opportunity finally restored, thanks to science, to the profit of the poor countries and the underprivileged populations.
It is however necessary to look at there more closely. And are born at once from heavy concerns. Let us leave to side the deaf person concern of certain worried librarians, without daring the statement too much, with the idea to see emptying their rooms of reading; admittedly, their trade will evolve/move little by little to serve documentation of the citizens and to clarify their choices in multiple manners, but object-delivers it has too many practical advantages compared to the screen not to remain very a long time. All the experiment of the History shows that in the past none new fashions of communication replaced the precedents - supplementing only and often developing them.
The true challenge is elsewhere, and it is immense. Here that the risk of a crushing domination of America in the definition of the idea continues that the next generations will be made world. Whatever the indeed width of the spectrum announced by Google, exhaustiveness is out of attack, at human sight. Very undertaken of this kind thus imply drastic choices, among the vastness of the possible one. The libraries which will launch out in this company are certainly liberally opened with the age and works of the other countries. It does not prevent: the criteria of the choice will be strongly marked (even if we contribute ourselves, naturally without being sulky, with these richnesses) by the glance which is that of the Anglo-Saxons, with its specific colors compared to the diversity of civilizations.
I keep in memory the experiment of the Bicentenary of the Revolution, in 1989, when I directed the demonstrations from there. It had been noxious and hateful for the balance of the nation, the image and the knowledge which it had of itself, of its past, of the events, luminous or dark, that it returned to us to commemorate, to go to seek in the only English or American data bases an account and an interpretation which were skewed there in multiple ways: The Scarlet pimpernel crushing Quatre-vingt-treize , valiant British aristocrats triumphing over the sanguinary Jacobins, the guillotine occulting the humans right and the fulgurating intuitions of Convention. This example is instructive, and it warns to us.
Let us not forget, in addition, another aspect of the question, which relates to work moving: in the ocean of Internet, where all circulates, in the order of truth like forgery, the processes of validation of the products of research by the scientific authorities and the reviews take from now on an essential importance. The Anglo-Saxon scientific production, already dominant in a quantity of fields, will be some inevitably survalorized, with an advantage crushing with English compared to the other languages of culture, in particular European.
It will be said that it is not a question in fact of complete writings, since they are not, per definition, fallen in the public domain, only of extracts protecting authors and editors. But precisely: this publicity will be inevitably discriminating. Let us add that, under the appearance of the exemption from payment, the Net surfer will remunerate in fact Google, as a consumer, since the company saw to 99 % of publicity and that the step which it announces only aims at obtaining a return on investment thanks to this one. Publicities in margin of the pages and the bonds privileged will guide towards purchases which will accentuate imbalance.
When was posed, since the second world war, on the side of the cinema then of audio-visual, the question of the French response to the American domination, dedicated, if one had not reacted, to oppress on our premises any original production, an initial reaction was of protectionism, according to a system of quotas, in the rooms then with television. That was not illegitimate and was partially effective. But, in the case which occupies us, this strategy appears, taking into account the nature of the Fabric, impossible. Thus remain the second, which proved reliable on our various screens: that of the counter-attack, with a positive support for the difference.
In this business, France and its national Library have a particular responsibility towards the French-speaking world. But no European nation is, one it can, enough strong to be able to ensure only the start necessary. I will be, of course, the last to neglect the accomplished efforts: the virtual library developed by the national Library of France (BNF) under the name of Gallica - which proposes already 80 000 works on line and 70 000 images, and which will offer soon the reproduction of large French newspapers since the XIX E century - is installed with the gratitude of many researchers and citizens, and it serves our influence around the world; but it saw only State grants, inevitably limited, and our own resources, with difficulty and valiantly mobilized. Our annual expenditure amounts only to one thousandths of that announced by Google. The combat is far too unequal.
Another policy is essential. And it can be spread only on the scale of Europe. Europe decided not to be not only one market, but a center of radiant culture and political influence without similar around planet.
The hour is thus with a solemn call. It is allocated to the persons in charge for the Union, in its three major authorities, to react without delay - because, very quickly, the place being taken, the practices installed, it will be too late to move.
A multiannual plan could be defined and adopted as of this year in Brussels. A generous budget should be assured. It is while advancing on public funds that one will guarantee to the citizens and to the researchers - providing for the expenditure necessary like taxpayers and not as consumers - a protection against the perverse effects of a search for profit dissimulated behind the appearance of a satisfying.
It is by gathering initiatives of State which one will avoid that all our funds of photographic archives are repurchased by American companies (Corbis, subsidiary of Microsoft, has already much advanced in this field). It is by mobilizing the specialized laboratories that one will ensure the development of a search engine as of software tools which are ours.
Everywhere one evokes, these times, the urgency of a policy of research and an industrial policy of long term which ensure, vis-a-vis various planetary competition whose dynamism continues so extremely, a future with the originality of Europe: eh well! they is exactly of that that it acts, it is this challenge which it returns to us to face. We can it, therefore let us owe we it.
Jean-Christmas Jeanneney , old secrétaired' State with the communication, is a president of the national Library of France and Europartenaires association.
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