23.5.05

1835 vs. 2005

Aphrodite's birds travel the skies from Paris to Amsterdam, and under their wing is clipped a list of daily quotations from the Stock Exchange; a telegraph sends a message from Paris to Brussels concerning the rise in 3 percent annuities; couriers gallop over highways on panting horses; the ambassadors of real kings bargain with ideal kings, and Nathan Rothschild in London will show you, if you pay him a visit, a casket just arrived from Brazil with freshly mined diamonds intended to cover the interest on the current Brazilian debt. Isn't that interesting?

Karl Gutzkow, Öffentliche Charaktere, part 1 (Hamburg, 1835), p. 280 ("Rothschild").
(citirano u: Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Harvard University Press, 1999 (2002 paperback), s. 571)

U mojoj glavi, citat iz 1835. koji je Benjamin ispisao oko 1940. podsjeća na sljedeće:

It is late at night, and I am at home, in my study, doing research for a book on the culture of war in Napoleonic Europe. In an old and dreary secondary source, I find an intriguing but fragmentary quotation from a newspaper that was briefly published in French-occupied Italy in the late 1790s. I want to read the entire article from which it came. As little as five years ago, doing this would have required a forty-mile trip from my home in Baltimore to the Library of Congress and some tedious wrestling with a microfiche machine. But now I step over to my computer, open up Internet Explorer, and click to the "digital library" of the French National Library. A few more clicks, and a facsimile copy of the newspaper issue in question is zooming out of my printer. Total time elapsed: two minutes.
It is the next day, and I am in a coffee shop on my university campus, writing a conference paper. A passage from Edmund Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace comes to mind, but I can't remember the exact wording. Finding the passage, as little as five years ago, would have required going to the library, locating the book on the shelf (or not!), and paging through the text in search of the half-remembered material. Instead, on my laptop, I open Internet Explorer, connect to the wireless campus network, and type the words "Burke Letters Regicide Peace" into the Google search window. Seconds later, I have found the entire text online. I search for the words "armed doctrine" and up comes the quote. ("It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.") Total time elapsed: less than one minute.

(David A. Bell, "What the Internet is Doing to Scholarship: The Bookless Future"; The New Republic on May 2, 2005 and The New Republic Online on April 22, 2005.)

Broj komentara: 5:

zdenka pregelj kaže...

Da, blago onim koji to rade na engleskom jeziku. Za njih nema nikakvih problema, sve im je na dohvat ruke. A nama???

Anonimno kaže...

Montaigne je sebe smatrao pchelicom koja preradjuje polen - Antichke pisce i pretvara ih u vlastiti med. Da je imao Google, imao bi vechu kontrolu nad informacijama, ali on sam kao izvor informacije, autor/pisac, izgubio bi na vazhnosti. Zbog danashnje brzine prerade informacija dolazi do hiperprodukcije - informacija kao kvantiteta stalno prelazi u kvalitetu - novu svijest - te pishe i prepisuje sebe samu do besvijesti. Ako je osnovna "tvar" realnosti upravo informacija, binarni niz, onda je na samom pochetku svijeta postojala pochetna informacija, "rijech", kao izraz stvoriteljeve svijesti, koja je u nultom vremenu u interakciji sama sa sobom (svojim odrazom u sebi) stvorila sve ostale informacije, prostor, vrijeme i fizikalne zakone, a dalje se sve razvijalo i razvija u skladu s time...(predlazhem ovo politicharima za slijedeche izbore kao govor na temu "Kako pokrenuti Hrvatsku?")

Anonimno kaže...

"I open Internet Explorer" bi trebalo biti: "I open Mozilla Firefox"

Anonimno kaže...

Ja sam voljela kopati po knjigama... Ma, sjajan je Internet, samo ima brzi ritam nego sto mi odgovara...

Anonimno kaže...

attrici che fumano
porn dvd
freschissimo insegnante
ragazze sculacciate
favoloso ragazze sex
con vibratore
likeable infermiera prostituta
percepire fotografia
favoloso segretaria inculate
inculate a
bionde spogliarello in cucina
loghi sexnerie anale
friendly cowgirl pompino
le porcellone pi troie
orge domestiche
latex weapon
bello nonne strip
mature collant
selvaggio fighetta ass to mouth
cutie amatoriali ubriache
vecchie troie vero gratis
dei
pleasant ragazze doppio penetrazione
mature collant
fotografie gratis di donne ubriache
scopata con oggetti
eccellere segretaria fottilo
si fa sborrare in bocca
foto gratis di liceali troie
faint americano frode
silvermen video
gambe e collant
adeguato vere
donne grasse e belle
come fregare
fiche leccate
gradito inglese diteggiatura
professoresse masturbate
www nostalgija
ridiculous soldato orale fotti
dei
bello idraulico gruppo
fica donne anziane
osare infermiera merda
osare asiatiche ubriache
vecchie troie vero gratis
come fregare
ragazze orale fotti in pace
likable fighetta orale fotti
www porcone com