>I can't see any downside to the endeavor, either.
The downside will be sudden and dramatic. The dissemination of current knowledge will continue and accelerate, but the accumulation of new knowledge (and particularly of new creative fiction) will grind to a sudden stop.
Believe it or not, people write to make a living. Do any of you think professors write new textbooks for the fun of it? I've written a book; some of you have even read it. I know how much time, effort, and soul I poured into that paltry endeavor. But if I knew that anything I spent all that time and effort working on would be available for free to anyone who has a computer and a CD-W drive I wouldn't f**king bother! You cannot support a writing habit )or a family) on laudatory emails from people who liked your work. And I will bet every last nickel I have that people will not send a voluntary contribution to an author whose work they have already devoured in order for that author to have the whereiwthal to write a sequel.
Google has now effectively eviscerated the pool of present and potential writers throughout the world. The only ones who will write for publication are those who have axes to grind. In other words, eveything new will be propaganda of some form or another.
Certainly there will always be those who love to read, to hold in their hands a book with real pages, something they can feel with their fingers as they travel in their minds to imaginary places and situations; but those few are not enough to sustain an artist who wants to paint pictures with words.
As many of you are aware, there are available several electronic readers that have the size and shape of a book, but with an LCD screen which projects an image of a page. I've not actually seen one, but mark my words, this misguided effort on the part of google will have the effect of putting these contraptions into the hands of every third grader and above.
But in fifty years there won't be anything new to read except for the diatribes of polemicists or the random maunderings of amateurs whose egos are massaged by seeing their names at the top of a manuscript. Either that or governments will have to finance writers, a future I find to dreary to dwell further upon. What will we do, pay them by the download? Let me see, it takes me twenty-seven seconds to download my novel. I get say 50 cents a download. How many times a day can I download that? And use a computer to do it over and over again so I don't even have to be present while I am extorting money from the public fisc.
I consider this a sad day.
