

The Secret Of Google's Book Scanning Machine Revealed - neilc
http://www.npr.org/blogs/library/2009/04/the_granting_of_patent_7508978.html?sc=fb&cc=fp

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siculars
i actually worked in the special collection division of michigan state
universitys library in the spring and summer of 1997. they were using a
commercial device, whose name escapes me, that allowed the book to lay flat
and be imaged from above. the software accounted for the curvature of the page
for ocr purposes. judging from the posted pictures in the article, the google
device seems more elaborate with stereo cameras in the infrared spectrum.

bottom line, though, is that people have been digitizing books for a long time
before google came along. sure, google is doing it on a larger scale with more
resources at their disposal but it is not new to the dozens and hundreds of
academic libraries around the world.

a simple search for overhead book scanners returns a ton of links, including
this one to wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning>.

~~~
nihilocrat
In fact, there's an instructable for making a V-shaped book scanner:
[http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-
Scanner-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-
Trash-and-Cheap-C/)

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brfox
Just because they wrote a patent application to scan books this way does not
mean they actually do it this way.

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asciilifeform
There is a machine like this in the library at the place where I work. They
are commercially available (at a somewhat steep price) and are old hat.

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10ren
This confirms the ridiculousness of _Rainbows End_ \- I'm a huge fan of Vernor
Vinge's previous work. He went bad (according to me) after he quit lecturing
comp sci to write full-time, in 2000. Larry Niven has said that quitting your
job is a mistake for writers, because it dries up your source of raw material
(nb: a general observation, not in reference to Vernor Vinge).

~~~
rcoder
I'm sorry, but...what?

The book-scanning process in Rainbows End was an obvious parable, not an
attempt at plausible futurism. Even in the book, alternatives to the
destructive scanning process existed, and the choice of digitization technique
was a business decision, not a technical one.

Furthermore, many of my favorite authors (Stephenson, Pynchon, Murakami) work
full-time as writers, and seem pretty capable of doing so without starving for
source material.

~~~
10ren
It's been a while since I read the book, but what's the obvious parable? Maybe
for me, it's a victim of an uncanny valley: it's neither stylized nor
plausible.

I may not have given it a fair reading, because (personal preference) I really
didn't like the book; the cyber stuff seemed more like unoriginal shiny tech
than a way to provide insightful commentary on what it is to be human - unlike
Tine pack minds, for example.

I haven't done a survey of fulltime writers; and I'm sure exceptions exist as
you've noted. Larry Niven knows many more writers than I do, and so I think
his observation probably has some merit. But really, I'm just expressing my
frustration with Vinge's output, and noting that it coincides precisely with
his retirement. I miss his old stuff.

