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The Library of Alexandria was the ultimate repository of human
knowledge in the ancient world. It was the one central place to go
for knowledge on any subject, from mathematics to astronomy to
philosophy. Having such a central repository proved to be
beneficial for a very long time: if you needed to know anything,
Alexandria was the place to go. The huge store of knowledge also
served as a jumping off point for even more knowledge, and the
library snowballed in this way towards an ever increasing richness
and diversity of knowledge. Eratosthenes, Apollonius of Perga,
Archimedes, Euclid, and Ptolemy are among the scholars that graced
this Pierian place.
Unfortunately, having most of all human knowledge in one central
place turned out to be disastrous. In the fourth century CE, under
the Christian Patriarch Cyril, the library was looted and torched.
Seven centuries of human knowledge was lost in one fell swoop; much
of the knowledge contained in the volumes at the Library would not
be rediscovered for up to 1500 years later.
At the beginning of the 21st century CE, the beginnings of a new
Library began to take shape. The Internet fast became a massive
store of knowledge, personal musings, pornography, mundane business
dealings, and a host of other documents, the collective writings of
an millions of people. Off-line, people began writing books and
other information using binary file formats such as DOC and XLS,
controlled by one corporation, Microsoft.
Eventually electronic books did catch on; or rather, they were
forced to catch on. The hardware and software worked in concert to
prevent illegal copying and illegal reading: pay-per-read became as
ubiquitous as pay-per-view. On the software end of things the SDOC,
or Secure DOC, format, made by Microsoft, became the pen of choice
for authors and publishers. Secure DOC was encrypted, and only
approved e-books had the proper keys to unlock the encryption to
allow SDOCs to be read. These keys were tightly controlled and
regulated by Microsoft. Circumventing SDOCs encryption scheme was
made illegal by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed in the
late 20th century CE.
On-line, Internet content providers saw how lucrative SDOC had
become, and wanted a piece of the action. Microsoft came up with
SHTML, Secure HTML, that would allow for pay-per-read Internet
sites. Once again, the keys to SHTML were Microsoft’s property, and
available only in Internet Explorer. Eventually SHTML was done away
with and everything was rolled into SDOC, which became the one and
only de facto way of exchanging electronic documents.
Publishers still faced problems with people reading paper books.
More than one person could read one copy of a paper book, and this
caused the publishers to lose money. Late in the 21st century CE, a
law was passed severely restricting the use of paper for documents.
It was sold to the public as an environmental concern: why cut down
trees when we can live in an electronic, paper-less world?
Music, too, was being distributed purely electronically in the
SMUSIC format. CDs, minidiscs, and other physical means of storing
music went the way of paper. SMUSIC could only be created by
microphones and other equipment with valid keys, and could only be
played on speakers and other equipment with valid keys.
Pay-per-listen rose up along with pay-per-read.
For a while having one document format, SDOC, and one music
format, SMUSIC, controlled by one corporation, Microsoft, worked
well for the world. Everyone had e-readers and e-writers, and they
all spoke the same language, and per-read fees could easily be
collected. Everyone had e-players and the professionals had
e-recorders, and they all spoke the same language, and per-listen
fees could easily be collected.
Eventually, however, like all empires of the past, Microsoft
ceased to be. The corporation exploded in a nebula of lawsuits,
intellectual property claims, and red tape. Suddenly, e-books could
not contact the Mother Ship to verify encryption keys. Speakers
stopped working and microphones refused to record without proper
approval from the Content Verification System, which no longer
existed. The knowledge necessary to circumvent the keys, long ago
driven underground by legislation, had been wiped out when the
corporations won the Piracy Wars of the late 22nd century CE. The
keys themselves were locked up in lawsuits and counter-lawsuits,
and were eventually lost.
The lessons of the fourth century CE were relearned late in the
24th. It took humanity another 1500 years to fully recover from The
Alexandria Effect, as it came to be known.
“History does not repeat itself,” Mark Twain once said.
“It rhymes”.
Copyright (C) 2001 Ryan T. Sammartino
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify
this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no
Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the
license can be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
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