[LINK] E-books said to be "utterly unneeded"

[Chirgwin, Richard]

>The commercialisation of books as the method to information 
>is rather recent phenomenon.

True, Marghanita, but the attempt to "own" the information - or the source
of it - is not recent. Prehistoric religious practices were often designed
to keep information within a peer group - eg, to treat something like "when
to plant seeds" as a religious mystery was to maintain the position and
status of one group. Or Feng Shui (sp?), the codification of architectural
practices in religious mystery. 

Richard Chirgwin	

-----Original Message-----
From: M. da Cruz [mailto:marghanita@ramin.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 10 August 2001 15:01
To: Danny Yee
Cc: Jenny Millea; link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] E-books said to be "utterly unneeded"


Danny Yee wrote:
<snip>
> The Internet and the content available on it demonstrates conclusively
> that there *are* incentives other than profit that will make people
> write and publish.  Also, people estimate that 90% of software is
<snip>

Communication perhaps? 

The origin of books was not to make profits but to store and communicate
knowledge for future reference - consider the Bible, Koran or the
Bhagavad-Gita. Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers wrote down
"folk" fairytales from a storytelling era. The commercialisation of
books as the method to information is rather recent phenomenon.
  
Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz 
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