I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

In 2002, Google began an ambitious project to digitize every book in the world. It was intended as a search project: type in a query, and Google would show you snippets. They asked university libraries for books, which they would scan for free. At Harvard we didn't permit them to take works under copyright, but other libraries gave them everything.

As a graduate student at Oxford in 1963, I began writing about books in revolutionary France, helping to found the discipline of book history. I was in my academic corner writing about Enlightenment ideals when the Internet exploded the world of academic communication in the 1990s.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

The American revolutionaries believed in the power of the word. But they had only word of mouth and the printing press. We have the Internet.

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

I would not minimize the digital divide, which separates the computerized world from the rest, nor would I underestimate the importance of traditional books.