The Universal Digital Library

Friedrich Nietzsche the famous German philosopher said regarding the human condition; “our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind” (p. 1). This quote is a perfect example of one of the fundamental human benefits of a universal digital library; the want of knowledge. Instead of having human knowledge spread scarcely across the globe in archaic buildings, we can build an advanced digital beehive of human knowledge, accessible by anyone. The universal digital library is a proposed plan to take all known texts and books and scan them, creating a digital copy that can be accessed by anyone for free on the web. This Universal digital library will not be an easy task to create. It will take time, money, and effort. It will also have to overcome the invested interests of other institutions, and the library generation. But with the increasing number of internet users in the third world the universal digital library will be able to bring knowledge to impoverished citizens that before would almost exclusively be a first world privilege.

To the generations before the advent of the internet, if one was to study, they would have to go to a library, where they would spend countless hours flipping through the pages of books and trying to find knowledge they were looking for. To this library generation the library is like a church. But instead of religious knowledge and oral tradition, the library is a place for secular knowledge and reason. Both places hold two different kinds of knowledge but the devotion to this knowledge is clearly evident. The similarities can be seen firsthand by walking into either. The atmosphere in both are of ...

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...kind is always in search of knowledge, we are what are thoughts make us. Texts allow us not just knowledge, but they also expand the human experience, so by exposing ourselves to a wide variety of texts you are shaping yourself as a person. With the universal library everyone will be privileged with this ability to expand their minds. This openness will affect the whole world for the better.

Works Cited

Friedrich Nietzche (1956) the birth of tragedy and the genealogy of morals, (issue 677) new york, Random house, inc.

Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays (1935; reprint, London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), P.127

Reform of copyright law. (N.D) retrieved September 29th 2011, from http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english

World Internet Usage and Population Statistics, March 31 2011, retrieved September 27th 2011 from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm