I don't necessarily agree with Vikas when he says we lose art and ideas
along with the loss of language. I agree that art and ideas are not static.
They change along with the times. What we think is lost is actually
modified. What we actually lose is a means of expression on a practical
level. What we gain are modifications to former ideas that in some cases
improve them. The art and ideas are still there. However, as English is
used in more of the scholarly publications, it gains
expressions/words/terms that cause the language to develop, while lesser
used languages or languages used only in popular or secular circumstances
cannot be used to express certain innovations due to lack of terminology.
Favoring one language over another instead of translating into other
languages what is written in English further erodes the usefulness of other
languages which causes their demise.

That said... I think people are as creative as they always have been
generally speaking. I think the loss Vikas might be referring to is more of
a cultural loss... a loss in diversity.

I am worried more about how the market for information has changed since
1995 with the invention of the WWW. For example, the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin in the last year spent thousands of dollars on
converting card indices to publications into an online index. (Not the
actual full text, mind you, but JUST THE INDICES!) They paid an outside
firm to do this. They plan on charging for access to this index on their
website. They have been forced to look for ways to make money because the
state is taking so much of it away. So.... my point here is that because of
the market for information, our society lost thousands of dollars on *real*
original research when the Society decided to use what little money they
had to duplicate and sell information online. The government has now
created a market-driven institution out of an institution formed to
encourage original research! Is this *really* what we want? How does this
plan serve to benefit future researchers? We are not focusing on what is
important in the long run... to encourage creative and scholarly
thinking... and cultural diversity...

Michelle Laycock
Librarian



Kenosha News Library/Archives Dept.
715 58th St.
Kenosha, WI 53140
library@...
Today's news is tomorrow's history!
Web Site: http://www.kenoshacounty.com/services/archivesearch.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Prentiss Riddle [SMTP:riddle@...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 4:26 PM
To: Brewster Kahle
Cc: archivists@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [archivists] Is there gain in knowledge or loss of knowledge?


On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 01:45:38PM -0800, Brewster Kahle wrote:
>
> [on a recent trip to India, Dr Om Vikas from the Ministry of
> Information gave a presentation and one of the slides really hit me
> hard. I have reproduced it here, with permission. This is the first
> time I have ever heard someone question the accepted meme of our
> knowledge explosion. Even if I disagree with the fringes, it is a
> bold and interesting point. Maybe an analogy with the loss of
> biological diversity stands: there are more biomass on earth, but of
> fewer types. -brewster ]
>
> Is there gain in knowledge or loss of knowledge?
>
> * From an estimated 10,000 world languages in 1900, about 6,700
> languages survived in 2000. Two percent of the world's languages are
> becoming extinct every year. ...

At the risk of sassing my betters, I'd say that you need to get out
more, Brewster. :-) This is an old idea and a common critique of
globalism and cultural "monoculture". I think most any freshman
anthropology text would introduce the concept of net loss of knowledge
as traditional cultures join the mainstream.

Dr. Vikas' statistics about publication and translation are apt, but I
suspect that the numbers and proportions would be even more staggering
if similar statistics could be compiled about the oral traditions of
primarily unwritten languages.

Then there is a more philosophical and psychological question about the
relative information density of direct versus mediated experience.
Bill McKibben's widely noted 1993 book "The Age of Missing Information"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0452269806/) concerns a
Walden-like experiment in which he collected and watched all 1700 hours
of television provided by his cable TV system in one day, then compared
that with the experience of camping for 24 hours on a mountain.

For more on just the topic of language extinction, see:

"Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages" by
Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romain (2000,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195136241/)

"Most of the World's Languages Went Extinct", ch. 7 of "The
Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language" by John
McWhorter (2001,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006052085X/)

-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@...
-- Webmaster, Rice University | http://is.rice.edu/~riddle | 281-924-3630
-- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.



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