Universal Access to All

This past week in class, we read about and discussed digitization and digital libraries and the great potential that technology affords us in the area of information access.  I watched a Ted Talk given by Brewster Kahle, a digital librarian, inventor, and philanthropist.  In his presentation, he argues that through our current technological capabilities, "universal access to all knowledge is within our grasp", which is a truly encouraging and promising thought.  He works his way through each major format (print, audio, and video) illustrating that comprehensive digitization of each is currently a technological and financial possibility. 

Mr. Kahle also touches on the fact that many people prefer a physical copy of a book as opposed to reading on a computer or even on a smaller electronic reader of some sort.  His answer to this dilemma is a print on demand (POD) machine, that prints, collates, and binds a book in a matter of minutes.  An example of this is the espresso book machine...

 So, conceivably, a child in Uganda, or another developing country, can visit a bookmobile equipped with a POD machine, chose a digitized book online, and leave with a physical copy.  Pretty darned cool, if you ask me.

Mr. Kahle ends his talk with a question for us all... we clearly have the capacity to provide universal access to information and knowledge, but is this access going to be public or private?  We, as a society, must make the social and political decision to grant universal PUBLIC access to knowledge in the pursuit of a freer and more just world.

Here is the Ted Talk by Brewster Kahle....