This image is from the google book
Musée Religieux ou Choix des plus beaux tableaux inspirés par l'histoire sainte aux peintres les plus célèbres; first tome, published in 1836 by Hivert Libraire in Paris by "Etienne Achille Réveil, un ecclésiastiques du clergé de Paris".* The actual book is part of the Oxford University's history library collection.
Pursuing its
mission to archive everything for everything to be accessible to everyone, in
Google Books Google scanned library collections for printed knowledge to be preserved and made
more available to
more people and over
more time. The resulting scans, the google books, generally look like books but simultaneously aren't simple visual reproductions of books either. And while the
possible affects of this venture on knowledge are unsure, what is certain is that these digital formats are new vessels of knowledge; new mediums that necessarily carry new messages.
Sometimes these virtual books' new messages are very clear and this particular
Musée Religieux google book is one such extraordinary example. As the scan above shows, the Google employee's hands covered with pink mini-finger condoms caught scanning chapter 52 reminds us of the mediation that occurs between the book and the google book (or even the physical labor that any medium necessitates to carry its idea). This meta-narration was created during the scanning/mediating gesture and is only present in the new platform. The original book from 1836 never intended to suggest such a notion, nor does the present-day copy in
Oxford Library.
Even more amazingly these fingers were caught while scanning
"Moïse Apporte les nouvelles tables de la loi" (Moses brings the new tablets of law). According to the first testament Moses spent 80 days and nights to get these tablets (and their message) to his people (the etching on the left side of the fingers represents Moses telling his people where to place the heavy tablets). He had to climb and descend the
Mount Sinai, survive up there, wait for God to communicate and inscribe the principles in stone and all this
twice, because after having gotten really upset at his brother's pagan ways he smashed the first two tablets. However all this activity is said to have resulted in the 10 commandments which set some the fundamental ethical principles of Judaism and Christianity.
Relative to Moses' approach, Google seems to have something slightly more efficient happening (although not tested on the long-run), but makes one wonder: are google books and the knowledge that they make available today's stone tablets and commandments? are Google employees today's prophets? And of course are those Moses' fingers?
