The death of the book?

Citation

Wolf, K.H. (2010), "The death of the book?", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 66 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2010.27866cae.001

The death of the book?

Article Type: Comparative review From: Journal of Documentation, Volume 66, Issue 3

The Book Is Dead, Long Live the BookSherman YoungUniversity of New South Wales PressSydney2007189 pp.ISBN 978 086840 804 0Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the InternetIan F. McNeely with Lisa WolvertonW.W. Norton & CompanyNew York, NY2008318 pp.ISBN 200801900

Keywords: Books, Electronic books, Book publishers, Internet, Publishing

Books and modern electronic sources of information are and will be part of the creative documentary tools of our Knowledge Age. Their origin, evolution, and future need to be investigated continually. Of the numerous aspects, only a few preferentially selected opinions and interpretations are possible: two book reviews are combined here as they deal with closely related topics – the first describes and discusses the fact that the book as we know it has been changing as a result of technological and social “progress”; the second book deals with a historical survey of knowledge and puts the first book into a broader evolutionary/developmental context. A third book, referenced at the end, deals with the Internet as a source of data ought to be considered here as a challenge to those who may think that this electronic technology has only a beneficial influence. Not so, as the author – supported by several other researchers – will outline numerous deleterious, negative, even destructive, features of the Internet for both young and old; acknowledging simultaneously the huge contributions of the internet to our global information age.

Young’s book: “shows that even though more books are published every year, books died a while ago, long before the Internet. How can this be? Everyone thinks that the electronic media killed the book, but argues that we did it ourselves. It shows that most books are not products of a book culture, keen to explore new ideas and take risks. The vast majority are anti-books; cynical marketing-driven printed objects designed to capitalize on whatever the spin doctors declare is hot. Fewer people are reading them and their impact on our world is diminishing … ”. The Australian author, Sherman Young, as a passionate book lover and digital consumer and producer, is on a mission to make book culture matter again. Shirking nostalgia and without apology, he investigates the economics and technological requirements of publishing, making a case for books and reading all the while. His bold and exciting book will inspire readers, non-readers, and publishers to put books center-stage again, even if they’re not books as we now know them” (quoted from the advertisement jacket). The book’s enigmatic title reflects the last statement: today’s and future “books” are different, but still accompanied by traditional books – Professor Young describes and debates this phenomenon. If the phrase “the book is dead, but lives on” plus the seemingly contradictory sub-titles baffle you, dear reader, Young’s discussions will indeed fascinate you!

An Acknowledgements and a Prologue is succeeded by the following eight chapters. And, of course, the book ends with the usual Notes, Select bibliography, and Index. The Prologue sets the stage: the author refers to his experience with books; his exposure to the Internet, WWW (finding whole magazines there), and Google (still absence of some data), and amazon.com. Conclusion in the Prologue: “This book is that bit of debris. It argues that what’s important about books has long gone, lost in a world whose priorities are shaped by the need to make and move objects. Books die in many ways. They fail to sell and are pulped. Or left to languish unloved in remainder bins. Or they are not published in the first place, … Or they are soaked in flooded basement storerooms. Each of these death is a consequence of their physical form. For books to live again, a cosmic disturbance is required; separate to book from its object and the book can take on a new life. The book is dead. Long live the book”. The whole book then deals with this phenomenon.

Allow this telegram-style presentation of some aspects of each chapter’s sub-headed sections.

1. The book is dead. Seemingly, the book always died – the executioners: the movies, radio, television, internet, and Google’s aim to digitize books. The book is no longer the center of our culture, it is peripheral; our everyday thinking is shaped by other media. And here Young commences with one of his first “challenging” two statements that on first sight (according to my experience in several countries) are contradictory: e.g. “no-one reads books anymore” versus “more books are being published than ever before”. And then: “all this might be true, but the book still is dead”! This come-on psychological(?) trick by the author keeps you awake, because you want to know “what comes next”. Young mentions “the fact that most books are now anti-books; are books in name only”; they are not part of book culture, “a culture centred on ideas and furthering the human conversation”. What we still have are objects called books, and publishing businesses, although the book’s unique value to contribute to humanity are increasingly diluted; although celebrity cookbooks, for example, are selling like hotcakes. What’s left? Not much, according to Young.

In the following sections entitled New technology and all that; Books don’t matter; Does anyone still read books?; In the beginning; and What is a book meant to do? the author describes and discusses the influence of modern electronic approaches; computerisation; the problem of the book being an “object”, i.e. the numerous limitations of its “physical form”; admitting that books do matter; some statistics on book sales; some books (intellectual ones and JK Rowling’s) having an impact; and the tremendous social and political influence of Gutenberg’s Bible (Boorstin, 1983). This is followed by a definition of a book, the purpose of books: a brief outline what books are meant to do, what they are – concluding that the “very essence of book culture has migrated elsewhere … into other hands and other spaces”. For example, “the internet is making the invisible visible”.

2. What is a book? Young already dabbled in a definition of “book”, highlighting the book being a “physical object” – this “material form” being of fundamental significance in the electronic cyber-space age. But this style of definition misses the point entirely – so Young states in his section of The book machine that “a book is a technology”. He opines: “… all technologies are systems: a combination of an object, the processes that created that object, and ideas about that object … the “object of the book is merely one part of a technological system, or assemblage … that object might be the least important part of the assemblage … The most important of this technology are the ideas which inform it … so the book might be called an “abstract machine”; this is a key idea or meme (e.g. Blackmore, 1999; and the Internet for the “meme machine”) that makes books unique. A book is not just paper pages, it is a combination of ideas, cultural practices and industrial processes … And ideas can be technical, social, cultural, economic or overtly political. Books may share a similar physical (material) form, the reasons for their existence and the cultures they inhabit may be poles apart; books exist for completely different reasons and emerged from two completely different contexts.

Young is his attempts to answer “What is a book meant to do?”, then states in Print ≠ books that some suggest that the “abstract machine” is a thing called “print culture” referring to various published opinions and to the three distinctive elements of the book technology (ideas as content, publishing and marketing processes, object’s characteristics). In the next sections of Book culture?, Ideas machine, and Interactivity, Young deals with the “great human conversation” through writing, reading, editing, and publishing of ideas: it is a process of intellectual interacting; the result of author/publishers cooperation – all these deliberated “philosophically” at length in the final sections of So, what is a book?, It’s about time (e.g. the book needs “time”: to write and to read), and The answer is?. Of course, in the next chapter, Young then – as I warned you above – returns to his “literary emotional trick to baffle the reader” with a seemingly meaningless query, which then he has to logically explain, continually expanding his original definition of “the book”.

3. Nobody reads. This according to Young: not for entertainment, nor for enlightenment; we have no time; no desire as our lives are too short; only in bed might there be time for a chapter but only if we haven’t already fallen asleep. In any case, we prefer to watch Oprah or access the internet – only half of the population reads one book a year (365 days!) or so. So, Young asks: But what is reading anyway? Here his “correction”: of course, “we are still reading” – as we are still literate. But we just don’t read books, we are involved chiefly in “functional and informational reading” as in school, for instance, and in obtaining instructions for all types of gadgets in the house. We are not interested in reading for its own sake. In the section of Literary nonsense, the author discusses this phenomenon of “readable books and literary works, in contrast to “hard academic genre” of writings citing, again, some statistics on book sales. Then, Young proceeds to countering the above sub-heading by saying: But books still sell – because in America during 2005 the book trade was a 35 billion industry, as the data by Young proves: mainly self-help or foodie cultural, and other functional as well as celebrity autographical anti-books are in demand. Yet, Young lists some books that are “actually meant to be read”, e.g. The Da Vinci Code and numerous non-fiction children titles. In Books don’t matter, he again maintains that “… even the most ardent booklover would admit that in the overall scheme of things, books are no longer particularly important – they simply don’t matter.” He explains why. In Have there ever been readers?, Young points to the opinion that “book reading used to play a more prominent role in the shaping of cultures, … it was the sole source of credible information, and reading changed the world” – both positively and negatively (e.g. a list of the most influential books in history would have been rather illuminating). Once more (for the 3rd time), Young provides statistics (i.e. Table 3.1. US magazine readership) of who is reading what. One conclusion: “Men aren’t interested” in going to writer’s festivals, for example. So, he delves over seven pages into the question of What’s wrong with books?

And again: a typical cognitive/intellectual kick below the belt: “People don’t read books because they are too hard, too heavy, too long, too expensive, largely irrelevant in this fast-paced information age. Young debates the alternatives to functional books; the fear of the reading culture being replaced by the visual culture, movies and TV, and now by the Web-culture. Yet, the “reading” continuous – because the web content (e.g. YouTube) is text-based; it’s words, words, words. This web lifestyle is associated in the reading culture in “how people are reading”, plus a change in text layouts, prose style, alteration in spelling, etc. Not all is cognitively, intellectually, emotionally, ethically, and morally of an accepted quality! Young discusses the influences of this phenomenon on the future print-type newspapers and, of course, again on the book-reading per se and publishing industry, in general. Another conclusion: the books “being dull, static, unengaging, only offering a solitary experience, and less than dynamic for the twenty-first century digital mindset, … the printed book is an anachronism; books are everything the new media technologies are not: … no motion, no noise, no way to interact, no-one else is involved, … the apparent one-sided conversation of a book defies logic”. Finally: “Why read, when you can write?” With this humdinger of a question, Young then deals next with …

4. Everybody writes. Everybody is a writer; getting published is the holy grail; getting the book sold and especially read is the most difficult. We all learn to read and write, but most writing is invisible – so Young continues to opine in From Writer to Author. Yet, things have changed, because of the new media, new writing (e.g. the “interactivity” of the internet is acting as a social amplifier; writers are now authors with significant readership). This phenomenon is exemplified by Blogs: Instant Global Publishing; yet, as Young explains in the following sections of But a blog is not a book; What print can’t do; Not all that glitters; and Whither publishing? There are numerous types of problems among the advantages of this new mode of communication. It especially effects publishing. To fully comprehend this, Young deals in the next chapter with …

5. What do publishers do? Here some thoughts are provided related to That was then as contrasted to This is now, illustrating the changes more-recently experienced in the publishing industry. In Behind the retail façade, Young proffers six statistical tables on the fixed costs, earnings, and potential profits related to book production and sales. One conclusion: “the good old days existed within an entirely different economic context”. As he say in Rest in peace, “the golden age is gone for good and won’t come back … But the book trade is still caring about books and ideas and is passionate about creating a book culture that matters, and they want to be part of the changing world.” So, in the section Bring out the dead Young explains how the publishing industry can accomplish “how to make book culture viable in the new economy … by killing the physical object of the book … ”One suggestion: utilize the print-on- demand (POD) approach … localize the technology and use it instead for one-off-print runs to get an instant book. And as Young maintains, “… self-publishing does not replace the work of a publisher … Books are about ideas, stepping into the virtual economy seems logical. The object simply gets in the way … yet so many still confuse he object with the book itself.” No problem! Young continues to convince the readers that the books are still …

6. Objects of desire. But there are certain “limiting” aspects to be considered, such as the complaint by some that I can’t read on screen – thus many still prefer the printed book because it is easily readable, fixed in nature, permanent, accessible and cheap (relatively speaking). Young considers at length each of these characteristics in the sections of The more things change, but points out in Forever always ends that “all media forms are eventually superseded and replaced”. The Internet is here! This has a broad influence and control on the availability of books (see I can’t get the book) and the changing functions of Libraries. The latter already underwent penetrating changes through computerization, and now through digitizing thousands of books – many accessible via Websites. A good exemplar: the Encyclopedias. But as Young explains in Don’t call me cheap, the whole process favors readers:, e.g. the online Encyclopedias are much cheaper! Book lovers revel in the object of a book, as a holistic combination of several characteristics in contrast to the new media (as partly described above). Yet, the book must have a digital future if it is to be reborn, as deliberated in If not books, then what? The path to this has a past and a present – the previous efforts are replete with mishaps, false dawns and red herrings. So, read on about efforts “to separate the book from its object.”

7. Reconfigurations. Think about the new media technology in two ways: in terms and production plus distribution, this called the new new media (NNM). Secondly, look for things the NNM can do that previously haven’t been possible – Young lists a few. Yet, the two forms are not exclusive; the new old media and the NNM can (and do) happily co-exist. The book industry is no different: should the book be replaced by something completely different … or should we merely repackage existing books and utilize the new networks? Young deliberates this questions in some details in the sections of Giant leaps (use innovative alternatives to print; publish as CD-ROMs?), utilize the computer as a logical place for creating and disseminating new literary forms, as described in Hypertext – neither here nor there (i.e. use of interactivity-style non-linear texts). But then came several further “innovations” as debated in World wide web; Networked books; and What about videogames? Following this, Young then asks in If at first you don’t succeed the query “But haven’t e-books been a failure? Yes, there were some of them doomed for various reasons as Young discusses in a bit of historical reconstruction in Baby steps. Another interim conclusion: “Most of us still read printed books … this “failure” of the e-books being evidence that the book will not die; that the printed object has so many advantages that it will never be replaced.” But be cautious: “technological changes take longer than we expect, but with an impact that can be greater than imagined.” Young’s warning is then supported by proffering a short history of what happened in the music publishing industry (as outlined in Music – a lesson from not that long ago): “objects” they sold underwent rather quick and drastic changes comparable to what might happen to books – consider the mid-1980s invention of the compact disc (CD), then came the iPod and iTunes tipping-point introductions. So, as Young concludes, “the failure of e-books to date is not an indication that they will always fail – it is not a matter of if but when the printed object is replaced. Another example of replacement of technology is that of the development of the digital camera: “virtual images (digital files) did not replace analogue hard copy prints. They displaced them; the hard copy process has evolved not disappeared.” The major problem seems to be the absence of good e-reading devices; the ones available are Not good enough, but the one available from Sony is described by Young in is section And so to the Sony reader, but it is “at present merely a further baby step towards a future of a new reading device for the “new new book” culture. Only an innovative technical step is required.” Young challenges the publishers “to build on such devices and make a return to a book culture … to reinvent book publishing entirely and build a heavenly library.” For early book cultures, see Boorstin (1983).

8. The heavenly library. The future does not happen overnight; some time ago already “the idea that information could be unbound from objects was the stuff of techno-pundits who didn’t live in the real world … given that all information products, as exemplified clearly by music, could be digitized with relative ease, … all you need is a few clicks with the mouse”, so proceeds Young. But certain difficulties have to be overcome, such as “ cultural habits, legal hurdles, institutional inertia and economic constraints, which complicate and confuse.” Yet, Young states that “the very idea of a CD shop fills me with dread”, providing some reasons … but there is now the “online library of videogames”!

“Surely books, in a heavenly library, can’t be far behind … proffering the world’s collection of books available in an instant: searchable, downloadable, readable with suggestions from other readers, authors, critics; and a place to contribute to discussions … This will be a entirely new book ecosystem with ideas being more important than objects; … ” Young lists a host of positives. So, how about Finding readers and Freeing publishers? – this being debated by Young, offering one table speculating about the E-Book Profit Potential. This “progress in attempting to reinvigorate book culture”, of course, is “mourned by many who still prefer the printed object”. But Young highlights in Tactility or the planet? the environmental impact of the online books: less paper in the world will be needed; no shipping costs involved; and so forth! In Hurdles and hoops, Young deliberates the “numerous problems to be overcome” – if not, “the book culture will disappear”, so that in the penultimate section of A modest proposal he proposes “four simple steps” to publishers who need “to shift their focus away from the object and onto its contents” – but he is careful in forecasting any quick success of the digital heavenly library. There is no doubt: we all have to be optimistic with Young in attempting to “rescue” the book trough continual discussion and evaluation, as he expresses hope in the final section of The book is dead – Long live the book. Young’s (printed) book “is a provocation; its aim is to get that conversation going.” See on-line: www.thebookisdead.com.

The second book, by McNeely and Wolverton, might well be entitled the Rise of our Knowledge Age, as it includes a history of the book culture.

As the title suggests, this book “reminds us that the ‘knowledge revolution’ brought on by the internet is not the first such revolution, or even the biggest. Its encyclopedic study of the history of Western knowledge (Boorstin, 1983) both fascinates in its own right and yields important insights into the fast-changing nature of knowledge today” (from the back-page advertisement).

Inasmuch as each chapter offers a wealth of information impossible to be dealt adequately with here, I will mainly list the sub-headings below. This all-too-brief overview is then compensated by quoting/paraphrasing from the authors” Conclusion. To obtain a quick overview, and whet your cognitive/intellectual appetite for details of the rest of this fine book, read the Introduction and Conclusion first.

The overview-style 12-page Introduction is followed by six chapters dealing with the evolution of knowledge since the Greek intellectual tradition. As presented below, each chapter’s main title is succeeded by a mini-overview, quoted here, and that in turn is followed by the text’s 2nd and 3rd order subheadings:

1. 1.

   The Library 300BCE-500CE. By transforming a largely oral scholarly culture into a largely written one, the Library made the Greek intellectual tradition both portable and heritable. A brief historical setting is offered by reference to several famous philosophers and others, like Aristotle, Alexander the Great, and Demetrius. As to telling the history of the library, there are three ways: institutional, intellectual, and political approaches – all described by the authors. This chapter is divided into the following sections: Speech and writing in the classical polis; Alexandria: Greece abroad (Hellenistic scholarship; Cultural patronage); Greek v. Chinese; Tales of destruction and loss).

2. 2.

   The Monastery 100-1100. Monasteries not only preserved learning through centuries of civilizational collapse but forged new links from the study of written texts to the marking and measurement of time. The sections are: Christianity and the written word; Books in the Wilderness; Texts and time in the Benedictine rule; From the Liturgical year to the Millennial week; Coda: AD 1000 vs the Kaliyuda.

3. 3.

   The University 1100.1500. Europe’s Medieval revival generated greater mobility, new towns, more contacts beyond Christendom – a reconfiguration of space demanding a reordering of knowledge. The sections are: Abelards’s loves; A tale of four cities (Theology at Paris; Law at Bologna; Medicine at Salermo and beyond; Arts at Prague); Christendom vs Dar Al-Islam).

4. 4.

   The Republic of Letters 1500-1800. Amid crises in scholarly culture, correspondence networks created a new western intelligentsia independent of past institutions and receptive to new discoveries. This history is divided into: The Letter (A network without nodes; Epistolary humanism; Scholarship across distances); The book (The rhetoric of discovery; Framing books with letters; Censorship; Orientation toward the future); The museum (The Wunderkammer; Museums as books; Coping with the new) The Academy (Literati and virtuosi; Ladies and gentlemen; Academics vs shuyuan.

5. 5.

   The Disciplines 1700-1900. Evangelical protestants and secular humanists combined to create the first national system of mass public education, and with it a new market for academic specialties. Section: Discipline as method: the seminar (Piety and profit as Halle; Göttingen: a living encyclopedia; Philology: the first discipline); Specialization: pundits vs professors (Sastras after Serampore; Publish or perish: the national market for ideas).

6. 6.

   The Laboratory 1770-1970. The laboratory physically enclosed a domain of objective fact, and the extension of its methods to ever wider public and private spaces enlarged the realms of scientific experts. This more-recent history is outlined in the sections of The spaces of laboratory science (the laboratory as the world: Humboldt; The laboratory as workshop: Lavoisier; The laboratory as seminar: Liebig; The world as laboratory: Pasteur); Social science: experimenting with people (Intelligence testing in the public schools; Efficiency experts on the factory floor; Scientific philanthropy and immigrant slums); Coda: Space Age management.

The life of institutions. Knowledge has been fundamentally reinvented fully six times in the history of the West Each new institution has replaced the last, reacting to transformations unanticipated and unaccompanied by its predecessor … generating entirely new rationales and practices for pursuing knowledge … laboratories have endured, but that does not mean that the other institutions are defunct. The ascendancy of the laboratory is reshaping the basic missions of other institutions, pushing some towards obsolescence, giving others a new lease on life … The monastery is marginalized, but the libraries, universities, and the auxiliary institutions of the Republic of Letters (book, museums, and academies) remain.

The Origins of the “Knowledge Society” is summarized in the following three sections (as quoted/paraphrased): Democratization; Commercialization; and The Internet. As explained, since 1945, the trends in knowledge development has favoured the laboratory” continued hegemony, but has undermined for example the traditional humanities. Democratization of American higher education lead to a radical expansion of universities, and in the natural sciences the laboratory’s links with commercialization has resulted in the distancing of many scientists from the disciplinary values of pure and public-minded research. Finally, the Internet has reviewed the ancient dream of a universal library to serve the dictates of democracy and commerce, empowering every individual to share information and knowledge. Today, the laboratories both inside and outside the university drive the growth of “knowledge society”.

Knowledge today. The authors maintain, that “today the laboratory science and the disciplines stand as the only remaining knowledge institutions” worldwide … and they act as the chief means by which Western knowledge systems manifest their superiority to the rest of the world. The West’s two other historical rivals have long since conceded the university’s supremacy … Computers and the Internet, for all their democratic potential, merely allow us to live out dreams of high-tech wizardry conceived decades ago … New electronic communities such as wikis and blogs, at the moment collectively dubbed Web 2.0, if anything make the pursuit of reliable, authentic knowledge more, not less, difficult online, by drowning out traditionally credentialed gatekeepers … we value less the ways that disciplines interpret texts and ideas, and other cultural products. Yet the Internet has done nothing to call into question the experiential, technological know-how that has always been the strength of the laboratory … Despite such challenges (as described by the authors) unbounded faith in science continues to paint humanistic discussions of values as outmoded and sentimental, often even as irrelevant … Inter-disciplinarity reigns supreme in all fields of research … breeding excitement but also the hubris that comes from transgressing disciplinary boundaries … Universal access to codified knowledge online might enable universities to focus on the uncodifiable experiential learning – always a feature of laboratory life – that can be imparted in person, whether by scientists or humanists … going beyond the enclosed, self-sustaining communities of sub-specialists. Increased contact with spaces outside the ivory tower … might give scholars the chance to apply and refine their learning in experimental settings … all to the further Reinventing of Knowledge”.

The two books reviewed above deal, of course, with the most-recent communication and knowledge-creating technology: the ubiquitous availability of computers and the Internet.

In addition many other publications describe the power, capability, usefulness, and positive aspects of the internet. Increasingly, however, the media (both printed and electronic) deals with the deleterious, destructive, even “psychologically and socially deadly” aspects of using the computer and its access to the internet with its millions of Websites. It is not possible here to enter this quagmire of negative information; just a few comments must suffice by referring to the book by Zittrain (2008). To quote/paraphrase: “Zittrain’s urgent wake-up call shows how the Internet is on a path towards ruin – a victim of its own success – and how we have a chance to avoid this rapidly approaching future. The Internet is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. But it is surprisingly delicate, and under threat … both the PC and Internet’s “generativity”, their capacity to welcome unfiltered contributions from anyone, has driven them … this “generativity” is the greatest benefit to us users of the Internet: we are free to connect with other people and to reap the rewards of unanticipated opportunities. Ever-increasing security threats, however – in the form of viruses, spyware and invasions of privacy – are now driving us to a new form of “tethered” applications, unable to be modified by anyone except their vendors, such as iPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos, which are set to eclipse the PC. Tethered applications have unusual and worrisome features … used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems reconfigured to eavesdrop on their owners, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct in viewer’s homes. New Web 2.0 platforms like Goggle mash-ups and Facebook are rightly celebrated … can be monitored and controlled by outsiders from a central source …’ Yet Zittran argues that the “generativity” of the Internet must be preserved for everybody – and he shows us how through new technologies and behaviour we can do it.”

Thus, Zittrain’s book (and perhaps also Trippi’s 2008 book, among numerous others) is unquestionably a follow up must-read! He deals with the battles of todays various communication systems, including the networks; with problems of cyber-security, generative dilemmas, tethered applications, software as service, and the lessons of Wikipedia; followed by various Solutions in his final chapters of “Stopping the future of the Internet: stability on a generative net”, “Strategies for a generative future”, and “Meeting the risks of generativity: privacy”. The numerous deleterious, harmful, even destructive, philosophical and social aspects of the Internet, as ignored by the other books, are highlighted by Zittrain.

Naturally, there are the innumerable positive, socially enhancing ways of the Internet. For instance, the use of blogging in politics is critically analyzed by Trippi (2008). In his Final Note he states: “You can’t understand how radically the Internet, social networks, and social and viral media are changing our politics, and somehow still believe that your institutions, your company, your country will somehow be immune. Everything is on the verge of big, sweeping change – more change than most of us can imagine – and it’s coming at a very rapid pace … ”

All these books proffer an easy-to-comprehend descriptive and conversational style as they address not only those professional readers involved with and fascinated by “academic” histories but also the general readers wishing to delve into the origins and future of Knowledge Age. There is, however, a noticeable sequence from the first book’s more-introductory to the third book’s higher-level technical presentation. Especially the Reinventing Knowledge is, as the jacket advertisement states, “an intellectual extravaganza, a dazzling introduction, fashioned with elegance and wit, to the key knowledge institutions in the West.”

Karl H. WolfSpringwood, NSW 2777, Australia