Page 39 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

itself, or to outside sources, tend to diffuse focus rather than to concentrate it, unless one views the links as equivalent to footnotes—details supportive or extraneous that you read if you have the time or inclination. My purposes in adding so many links are both to document the sources of my informa- tion like footnotes, and to amplify what I have written by providing links to further information. To me, the most appealing aspects of creating this database are its interactive aspects, its fluid, multi-dimensional nature with its links to the greater world of information, and the opportunity organize in different ways the widest range of material on the history of information as my curiosity expands with the ever-increasing accessibility of historical and other information on the web, and my greater access to physical books.
These essays may appropriately be called a book, though I did not write them in the way that someone would normally write a book: map out its scope, write an outline, organize it into chapters, and publish it as a finished work. If viewed from the perspective of traditional books, my process of writing these essays, until I decided that this material was truly finished in August 2020, would more reasonably be considered a series of published drafts or works in progress—not a finished text. However, under the work- ing, and also unfinished, definition of book formulated here I am aware that an unfinished work may be called a book—a published book, as it is online—even though during the writing process I continued to rewrite, re- vise, and expand it regularly. Having these essays online helps to explain the unique project that is HistoryofInformation.com. Whether or not these essays, and their associated database, are perceived as a book, or books, from their inception in 2005 to their completion in 2020, I have created these studies of media—from ancient to recent—entirely as digital files on the Internet, drawing from information in both digital and physical form, surrounded by thousands of physical books, many of which are beautiful objects produced over five centuries. I would not have wanted to create these studies, and probably could not have created them, in any other way.
In an April 2011 blog post under The Technium heading from kk.org, “What Books Will Become,” Kevin Kelly wrote of “the web’s great attraction: mis-
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