The communications revolution has gone viral in Britain this summer. The recent riots and looting appear to have been co-ordinated by smart phones and social networking sites. Gone, it seems, are the days when hoodlums fomented insurrection with a combination of furtive messages and indiosyncratic tic-tac.
I doubt that facilitating mass disorder was quite how Steve Jobs et al envisaged their genius being used, but perhaps they will be better pleased by how their inventions are reviving the worlds of literature and academia. So far this summer, the British Library has digitalised a great portion of its archive for the use of the virtual public, publishers have introduced ‘apps’ to extend their classic back catalogues to new audiences, and Oxford University has encouraged novices to translate and interpret ancient documents and fragments over the Internet.
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