Produced by Al Haines
Updated Version
NEF, University of Toronto, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Marie Lebert
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From Project Gutenberg in 1971 to the Encyclopedia of Life in 2007, 38milestones and as many pages, with an overview and an in-depthdescription for each milestone. This book is also available in French,with a different text. Both versions are available on the NEF<http://www.etudes-francaises.net/dossiers/technologies.htm>.
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Marie Lebert is a researcher and journalist specializing in technologyand books, other media and languages. She is the author of Lesmutations du livre (Mutations of the Book, in French, 2007) and LeLivre 010101 (The 010101 Book, in French, 2003). All her books havebeen published by NEF (Net des études françaises / Net of FrenchStudies), University of Toronto, Canada, and are freely availableonline at <http://www.etudes-francaises.net>.
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Most quotations are excerpts from NEF interviews. With many thanks toall the persons who are quoted here, and who kindly answered myquestions over the years. Most interviews are available online at<www.etudes-francaises.net/entretiens/index.htm>.
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With many thanks to Greg Chamberlain, Laurie Chamberlain, KimberlyChung, Mike Cook, Michael Hart and Russon Wooldridge, who kindly editedand/or proofread some parts in previous versions. The author, whosemother tongue is French, is responsible for any remaining mistakes.
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Introduction
1968: ASCII 1971: Project Gutenberg 1974: Internet 1977: UNIMARC 1984: Copyleft 1990: Web 1991: Unicode 1993: Online Books Page 1993: PDF 1994: Library Websites 1994: Bold Publishers 1995: Amazon.com 1995: Online Press 1996: Palm Pilot 1996: Internet Archive 1996: New Ways of Teaching 1997: Digital Publishing 1997: Logos Dictionary 1997: Multimedia Convergence 1998: Online Beowulf 1998: Digital Librarians 1998: Multilingual Web 1999: Open eBook Format 1999: Digital Authors 2000: yourDictionary.com 2000: Online Bible of Gutenberg 2000: Distributed Proofreaders 2000: Public Library of Science 2001: Wikipedia 2001: Creative Commons 2002: MIT OpenCourseWare 2004: Project Gutenberg Europe 2004: Google Books 2005: Open Content Alliance 2006: Microsoft Live Search Books 2006: Free WorldCat 2007: Citizendium 2007: Encyclopedia of Life
Websites
Michael Hart, who founded Project Gutenberg in 1971, wrote: "Weconsider eText to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper,other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper canpossibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way toeTexts, especially in schools." (excerpt from a NEF interview, August1998)
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web in 1989-90, wrote: "The dreambehind the web is of a common information space in which we communicateby sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that ahypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global,be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream,too, dependent on the web being so generally used that it became arealistic mirror (or in fact the