Google dominating the world, one step at a time

Google to scan 800,000 manuscripts books from Indian university

"Google has agreed to index and digitize 800,000 texts stored at the University of Mysore in India."
"Written in both papers and palm leaves, there are around 100,000 manuscripts in our library, some dating back to the eighth century," said the vice chancellor of Mysore. "The effort is to restore and preserve this cultural heritage for effective dissemination of knowledge."

Impressive.

I wonder how long it will be before there's a Google Cuneiform clay tablet search.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

From the wikipedia page linked directly above:

"Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, or they could be recycled if permanence was not needed. Many of the tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were baked when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept."

How ironic that the improvements that took writing from the unwieldy medium of a clay tablet to the more versatile papyrus also heralded an enormously increased vulnerability to destruction of irreplaceable future texts.