International Herald Tribune
03-31-2005
Surrounded by the 13 million books in the French National Library, Jean-Noel Jeanneney has good reason to feel safe from the frequent incursions of American popular culture and technology into contemporary French life. Indeed, for many French, the vast library over which he presides is a reassuring symbol of the durability of French literature and thought.Yet Jeanneney, who has headed the library since 2002, is not one to lower his guard. And he was immediately alarmed in December when he read that Google planned to scan 15 million English-language books and make them available as digital files on the Web. In his view, rather than democratizing knowledge, Google's move would further strengthen American power to set a global cultural agenda.''I am not anti-American far from it,'' the 62-year-old historian said in an interview in his office in the library's new headquarters overlooking the Seine. ''But what I don't want is everything reflected in an American mirror. When it comes to presenting digitized books on the Web, we want to make our choice with our own criteria.''When Google's initial announcement went unnoticed here, then, Jeanneney raised his voice. In a Jan. 23 article in Le Monde titled ''When Google Challenges Europe,'' he warned of ''the risk of a crushing domination by America in the definition of the idea that future generations will have of the world.'' And he urged Europe to ''counterattack'' to preserve its culture and political influence.In subsequent interviews, he said Europe should not only convert its books into digital files, but should also control the crucial page rankings of responses to searches. And gradually his one-man campaign bore fruit. On March 16, with French newspapers, intellectuals and politicians now focusing on the Google challenge, President Jacques Chirac summoned Jeanneney and Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres to the Elysee Palace.After their meeting, a statement said Chirac had asked them to study how French and European library collections could be rapidly made available on the Web. The statement concluded: ''A vast movement of digitizing knowledge is under way across the world. Blessed with exceptional cultural heritage, France and Europe should play a central role in this.''But where there is a will, is there a way?Jeanneney is the first to admit that he has a clearer idea of where he wants to go than how he will get there. On the technology required to manage a European vision of digitized knowledge, for instance, he said Europe had the choice of trying to develop its own search engine or of reaching agreement with Google, the world's most popular Internet search service, or perhaps with other Internet search providers, like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Money, too, is a variable. Newly rich from its stock offering last summer, Google expects to spend between $150 million and $200 million over a decade to digitize 15 million books from the collections of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. For copyrighted books, only excerpts will be available online, but the full texts of books first published more than 70 years ago will be posted.In contrast, Gallica, the French National Library's current scanning program, has an annual budget of only $1.35 million. So far, it has placed on line some 80,000 books and 70,000 drawings and will soon add part of its collection of 19th-century newspapers. But in most cases, it offers only photo images of pages, much like microfilm files, rather than texts which can be searched for words or names.''Given what's at stake, $200 million is very little money,'' Jeanneney said of Google's planned investment.What is most at stake for him, though, is not simply the continued expansion of Anglo-Saxon culture driven by the strength of the English language. It is that Google's version of the universal library will place interpretation of French and other continental European literature, history, philosophy and even politics in American hands. And this, he believes, represents a peril far more radical than, say, American movies, television or popular music.Certainly, in popular culture, France has found ways of defending itself, not least by excluding culture from current free-trade rules. Thus, thanks to direct and indirect subsidies, France's movie industry has prospered when those elsewhere in Europe have faltered. Similarly, in the 1980s, when Jeanneney headed Radio France and Radio France Internationale, he placed quotas on the broadcast of non-European music.But his concerns now run deeper, dwelling on how Google will select information related to France and Europe from among billions of digitized pages. Having organized celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1989, he used the Revolution as an example. ''If we tap in 'Robespierre,' will we only have him as a dictator, or also everything about his promotion of human rights and universal suffrage?'' he asked.Jeanneney also fears that the profit motive payment for page rankings will distort Google's selection and presentation of digitized books. ''Google wants to earn money, although I don't think this is the only factor,'' he said. ''I think it wants to participate in a universal culture in which everyone lives better. But with Google on the stock exchange, it will have to earn money.''In Europe's case, he would prefer to see governments providing the financing. But that raises the question whether governments will also choose the books and define the criteria for ranking available information. ''European ranking should reflect a European vision of history and culture,'' Jeanneney argued. But which Europe? That of the French, German and Spanish languages? That of the 25 members of the European Union? So far, then, all that exists is the idea of a European parallel to Google. And it is evidently too early to know how European libraries and publishers will respond (Google's own contacts with French publishers were met with suspicion). But Jeanneney has at least opened the debate. And if the French are perhaps the most sensitive to new expressions of unilateral American power, the rest of Europe also has ample culture to defend.The next step will be when Chirac proposes a concrete initiative to European culture ministers meeting in Paris in early May. And if the rest of Europe does not echo Chirac's call for a regional answer to Google, it seems likely that France will go it alone. France may no longer be a global power, but culture is one area where it is still unwilling to surrender to American might. Overnight, it seems, Jeanneney has given birth to a new national cause. **E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com***Tomorrow: Richard Bernstein writes about the weird business as usual at the UN Human Rights Commission.
2005 Copyright International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com
No comments:
Post a Comment