Postmodern Libraries

There is a great article in the New York Times Magazine this week about the creation of digital libraries. It's long but worth your time if you at all interested in books or if it seems that pulling yourself away from Wikipedia gets more difficult each day. Kevin Kelly discusses the way that tags and hyperlinks have connected the thousands of disparate encyclopedia entries will soon be applied to entire collections of libraries and the potential that this holds for connecting the formerly isolated works as "the universal library becomes one very, very, very large single text: the world's only book." For example, say you just woke up on Sunday morning, and as you drink your morning coffee, you finally pick up that book you said you were going to read this summer. You make it through the first few pages, but when you come to that description of banana pancakes you start salivating. With the creation of these digital libraries, you could click on the link that another user has created to banana pancakes, a recipe would pop up, and then that delicious breakfast could be yours. Your summer reading will always be there after you've satisfied those hungover tastebuds.