Interview date: February 8, 2010
Medford, Massachusetts and Centennial, Colorado

Greg Crane

Summary:

Crane sees a lot of things that can now be done via the World Wide Web, but if the boundaries are pushed, problems arise and you run in to things that

cannot be done generically. Crane thinks that the people in Google are inexorably holding in on a lot of the core functions that create a modern intellectual life. Crane sees Google as more aggressive than the digital libraries have been; hebelieves that the cyber infrastructure will come out of the minds of Google.

Crane believes content is key and that we are driven by data. But content and services all had to be built from scratch. Remembering ten years ago, Crane was working on a London project where 40 books were put online. Crane spent a semester cleaning up these books by hand and extracting information. Now, with Google Books (or just the internet archive) you can instantly start data mining and working with them. All of that information is just right there, for access; it is incredible.