If I could give you a thousand upvotes, I would. I have spent countless hours in libraries exploring the stacks, absolutely everything was at my fingertips. Nothing can compare.
This is why I was so excited in the early days of Google Books. The digitalization of most written human knowledge would have created a modern Library of Alexandria, a sprawling, perfectly catalogued archive. An open API would make it so you could walk through in a metaverse platform, or scroll through by section, shelf, and spine. A bot librarian could guide blind users through and read books for them, either via BrailleNote or voice assistant.
Instead, copyright turned Google Books into a worse version of Amazon's "look inside" feature, depriving the internet of immeasurable substance.
Instead, copyright turned Google Books into a worse version of Amazon's "look inside" feature, depriving the internet of immeasurable substance.