If there is only an average of 2.5 people on each of 400M computers, that is a billion people, just in 1995. There will probably be a billion computers in the world by 2001 when Project Gutenberg hopes to have 10,000 items online.
If only 10% of those computers contain the average Etexts from Project Gutenberg that will mean Project Gutenberg's goal of giving away one trillion Etexts will be completed at that time, not counting that more than one person will be able to use any of these copies. If the average would still be 2.5 people per computer, then only 4% of all the computers would be required to have reached one trillion.
[10,000 Etexts to 100,000,000 people equals one trillion]
Hart's dream as adequately expressed by "Grolier's" CDROM Electronic Encyclopedia has been his signature block with permission, for years, but this idea is now threatened by those who feel threatened by Unlimited Distribution:
===================================================== | The trend of library policy is clearly toward | the ideal of making all information available | without delay to all people. | |The Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia (TM) |(c) 1990, 1991 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.
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Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532
No official connection to U of Illinois—UIUC
hart@uiucvmd.bitnet and hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Internet User Number 100 [approximately] [TM]
Break Down the Bars of Ignorance & Illiteracy
On the Carnegie Libraries' 100th Anniversary!
Human Nature such as it is, has presented a great deal of resistance to the free distribution of anything, even air and water, over the millennia.
Hart hopes the Third Millennium A.D. can be different.