[b-greek] RE: e-Greek & information discounts

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 08:19:11 EDT


This, like some other issues that Clay has initiated as threads on B-Greek,
is more (and less) than a B-Greek question. I won't dispute his reasoning
or motives in writing at the very outset:

>I think this topic has obvious implications for the b-greek forum or I would
>not have posted it here.

But in fact it has implications for Biblical Scholarship and in fact for
ALL scholarship in the broadest sense: there's nothing whatsoever
"esoteric" about Biblical Greek scholarship that exempts it from the
process that Marshall McLuhan almost half a century ago described in his
little book, _The Medium is the Massage_. What we are coming increasingly
to realize is e-texts, now that they have become, thanks(?) to the
technology, (relatively) easy to produce and (relatively) easy to publish,
are already coming to suffer/share the same fate as printed texts, namely:
the multitude of what is accessible is anything but a guarantee that what
is accessible is worth having or worth reading. Discrimination has to be
exercised over what one tries to acquire and assimilate: so what else is
new? To an extent the problem of "information discounts" grew exponentially
with the original Gutenberg and the ante is raised at least one notch with
Project Gutenberg.

No doubt this is a matter of considerable interest to many B-Greekers, but
I would submit it is of interest to them for reasons that are not strictly
and essentially the focus of B-Greek itself. If people want to say
something about it before we drop it, then please let's focus it upon how
it may bear specifically upon Biblical Greek language and Biblical Greek
texts.
--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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