Hamish McRae, Google changes whole relationship between knowledge and people, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 22, 2004. Much of what McRae says in praise of Google applies even better to open access. Excerpt: "But for the world, the ever-greater capability of search engines, coupled with the ever-growing pile of information on the Net, is changing the whole relationship between people and knowledge. We cannot all be experts, of course, but with a decent basic education, a reasonable command of English and a bit of time, we can have a working knowledge of almost any specialist subject. Just as the car democratized physical mobility, this collection of technologies democratizes intellectual mobility. Because we are still in the early stages of the revolution -- we are perhaps where the car was in 1910 -- it is hard to see the social consequences of a Googled world....As search engines develop, power will shift to two groups: the top-branded institutions to which people will be directed and the clever and talented individuals who know how to find their way around the system. The top-branded institutions' reach will be increased and the talented people will be liberated from the second-ranked ones. That goes for governments, too. The more information people can discover about the performance and competence of government, the more able they are to call them to account."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/22/2004 09:37:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
