A Library in a Box

The other night I was sitting in my apartment watching the new episode of South Park in which the entire town begins to be overrun by people from New Jersey. If you haven’t seen this episode I would strongly suggest taking a break from reading this post and go to southparkstudios.com and watch it...it’s hilarious. After the episode was over I wondered how the lampooned celebrities reacted. I mean they took “Snooki” from Jersey Shore (who by the way is Chilean, not Italian as the show asserts) and reduced her a Gollum-like creature that does nothing but roam around the town looking for booze, cigarettes, and guys . Without even thinking about it I called up the Wikipedia page about the episode and sure enough it included the reaction from “Snooki” as well as reactions from the other lampooned Jerseyites and the response from critics. With a couple clicks of the mouse I was able to compare and contrast my personal reaction to episode with the reaction of the culture at large. And this was done all through Wikipedia. Sitting here now I’m trying to remember what I might have done to obtain this information before Wikipedia and I can’t remember... legitimately.
Where did I go for information before the Internet? Again I can’t remember, but that could easily be attributed to me being 9 when I started using the Internet (I hardly remember what happened yesterday, let alone when I was 9). In this world of new media the computer is the cultural database, not simply a cultural database. Manovich says, “ Today, in accordance with the transcoding principle, these two computer based forms migrate back into culture at large, both literally and conceptually. A library, a museum-in fact any large collection of cultural data-is replaced by a computer database” (214). As new media continues to grow, it continues to gather more and more information. This information is spread across a variety of interfaces, but everything is still united by the physical presence of the computer screen. I think it was James Baldwin who once said that if one were to send one object in a capsule across the universe to sum up humanity to alien life forms, it would be impossible to select that one object. Well, why not send out a computer (with Internet access). It would make sense because contained in this one object is all of humanity. History, art, athletics, etc. can all be found somewhere on the computer and since everyone that has computer access has the potential to include anything they want, a computer has the potential to explain what it is to be human (in theory anyway).
Maybe that last paragraph was a little “out there”. Let me wind it back for a second. In our world, as it stands right now, we are slowly, but surely moving all information into the computer. As Manovich says a computer database is unique because, “it allows one to quickly access, sort, and recognize millions of records; it can contain different media types, and it assumes multiple indexing of data, since each record besides the data itself contains a number of fields with user-designed values” (214). When writing a paper now there is almost no need to go to the library. Through online databases we can find all the information needed using a computer. I can remember learning how to use Encyclopedias early on in school, but I don’t think I’ve even seen one in the last eight or nine years. After learning how to research with a computer reference books, like Gameboys, were relegated to the nether regions of my subconscious.
All forms of media are now available online. If someone misses their favorite show, they can watch it online later. If you want watch a movie that just came out on video there’s no need to go to a video store (sorry Blockbuster) it’s on Net Flix. Ever wonder what it would sound like to be at a Grateful Dead concert in the 70’s? Well, just go to Youtube and take a listen. Indeed, all of our culture is somewhere online. Imagine if all the information on the Internet was in a library. What a ridiculous structure that would be. Still, it would be a good representation of all of humanity. And what is a computer besides one giant library of human culture squeezed down into a small box? And that’s why I want to send a computer in a capsule across the universe.