Transcription: Michael Hart, UNESCO, 2004-02-12, premiere partie

[Sebastien Blondeel <blondeel AT clipper.ens.fr>]

Voici en PJ ce fichier, avec quelques suggestions de présentation.

Il faudra probablement plusieurs étapes dans le workflow:

1. transcription assez fidèle, avec conventions régulières

2. spellcheck, ajout des liens vers les choses mentionnées
   (marques, sites web, conférences, personnes...)

3. réécriture en style plus écrit, avec moins de répétitions,
   hésitations...

4. vérification par les intervenants concernés

5. publication avec méta-données renseignées de manière cohérente,
   consistante.

Le fichier en PJ en est à l'étape 1.
Disposer d'une zone SVN serait sans doute pratique voire idéal.

Pour information:
. les 20 premières minutes m'ont pris environ 80 minutes de travail
  (discours calme)
. les 20 dernières, plus «sales» (rapides, hésitantes...), 120.

Compter donc un facteur 5 à 6 par rapport au temps de l'input, peut-être
un peu plus en incluant les pauses.

Une stratégie peut être d'écouter le tout à une vitesse un peu ralentie
pour ne pas devoir réécouter trop. Ou d'opter pour des longueurs
d'intervalles d'écoute plus petites.
INPUT MEDIA:
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PLACE:
======
UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France

DATE:
=====
Thursday, February 12th, 2004.

SPEAKER:
========
Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg

LENGTH:
=======
40m:33.637s

WORKING TIME:
=============
About 200 minutes.

COPIST:
=======
Sébastien Blondeel

PART 1/3
========

KEY:
====
[[mm:ss]] time in the recording
XXX       unrecoverable error
{word?}   spelling unsure, or could not hear well
_word_    emphasis
WORD      emphasis
[word]    something that happens or voices in the background

RAW TRANSCRIPT:
===============

[[00:00]]

{Aziz Habid}: Bonjour, chers amis, mesdames et messieurs, il m'est très
agréable de vous accueillir ici à l'UNESCO. Je commence par me
présenter. Je suis {Aziz Habid}, je dirige ici à l'UNESCO un programme
que certains d'entre vous connaissent peut-être qui s'appelle la mémoire
du monde, c'est un programme patrimonial qui vise la conservation et la
plus grande accessibilité du patrimoine documentaire mondial. Et nous ne
sommes pas ici aujourd'hui pour parler de mémoire du monde mais nous
sommes ici pour parler d'un sujet qui lui est très très proche et qui a
un potentiel immense de accessibilité du plus grand nombre au plus grand
nombre également de livres dans le domaine public. Donc il s'agit de
vous introduire aujourd'hui la conférence qui sera donnée dans quelques
minutes au sujet de ce projet Gutenberg. C'est un projet qui est
extrêmement sympathique, un projet de partage de fichiers, on nous nous
connaissons tous les projets similaires pour la musique. Moi j'ai des
enfants qui passent la nuit à télécharger de la musique. Je vais leur
dire maintenant qu'ils peuvent passer la nuit à télécharger des livres,
je ne sais pas si j'aurai autant de succès. Mais c'est un projet qui est
très très sympathique et je pense que un projet comme celui-ci mérite
amplement qu'on s'y attarde, qu'on comprenne un peu ses promesses, ses
difficultés, où il se trouve aujourd'hui dans la courbe de son
développement, et peut-être également comment on peut lui donner un coup
de main, comment on peut renforcer le volet francophone et les autres
volets de ce projet. J'ai pas eu le temps vraiment de regarder sur les
11000 livres qu'on nous annonce qui ont été numérisés, quelle est la
part de la langue française dans ces 11000 livres numérisés, quelle est
la part de la langue espagnole, quelle est la part de la langue
italienne, je pense que ce sont autant de questions que nous pourrons
tout à l'heure discuter, examiner avec notre conférencier. Le
conférencier que j'ai le plaisir de vous introduire dans quelques
minutes c'est Michael Hart. Michael Hart est le fondateur du projet
Gutenberg, il y a déjà plus de 30 ans que il a commencé à travailler sur
ce projet. Si j'ai bien compris il s'agit pour Michael Hart de présenter
son projet pour la première fois ici en France. Et je pense que nous
allons avoir pendant à peu près 2 heures le privilège d'écouter Michael
Hart, de savoir comment ce projet a démarré, comment ce projet a cette
ambition d'offrir au plus grand nombre donc l'accès à des livres
électroniques en grande quantité, je pense que il faut un moment donné
atteindre une masse critique pour qu'un projet comme celui-ci devienne
une sorte de locomotive pouvant tirer à sa remorque d'autres projets
semblables. Il y a des chiffres qui nous ont, qui vous ont été proposés
dans cette note de présentation. On nous dit qu'il y a à peu près 11000
livres électroniques qui sont déjà disponibles, il y a près de 500
nouveaux livres qui sont numérisés tous les mois, et c'est un travail
donc de partage de fichiers qui est en cours. Une précision: Michael
Hart s'exprimera en anglais, mais vous pouvez utiliser des écouteurs.
Nous avons des collègues qui vont assurer l'interprétation simultanée en
langue française. Donc il y aura un retour aussi quand vous poserez vos
questions vers l'anglais pour Michael Hart. Donc je pense que nous avons
devant nous un sujet passionnant et nous allons prendre le temps qu'il
faut pour exposer ce sujet devant vous et vous laisser le temps
d'apporter vos contributions, d'ajouter vos questions, etc.

[[04:30]]

Before leaving the floor for Michael, Michael Hart, I will just make a
small comment. The title of this project is the Gutenberg project. We
all know who is Gutenberg, we all know that Gutenberg is there to
inspire actions in the area of wider accessibility of printable, printed
books but I would like just for the sake of truth, historical truth, to
say that the first printed book did not take place in Germany. The first
printed book was not printed by Gutenberg. The first printed book was
printed in a small city called {Chung Ju} in Korea, in South Korea now.
It's a very small book about hundred page and it's similar to the first
printed material by the printed the printed press of Gutenberg. It's not
a bible, it's not a 42-line book, but it's a priest, buddhist priest
teachings printed in a small book about 50 years before Gutenberg has
started his printing workshop in Mayence. With this, I think we we of
course, this does not take anything away from the symbolism and the
associa that we have with the word Gutenberg and I think that in all
parts of the world, when you say Gutenberg, everybody thinks about the
movable metal print and I think that we are going now, entering into a
new era, where the book is not only printed on movable metal type but
also on in electronic format and in many many many electronic formats so
that everybody could have access even people who have not not high-tech
computer equipment but even low-tech computer equipment and this is
something good I really like very much about this project. Now you are
not here to listen to me, you are here to listen to Michael Hart.
Michael, the floor is yours.

[[07:05]]

Michael Hart: En 10 ans, nous avons 100 livres électroniques. Heure,
nous avons 11 livres 320 livres électroniques. J'espère 10 ans plus,
dire nous avons un million livres électroniques. Bienvenue. That is what
French you shall get out of me. [laughs, applaud] I try.

[[07:48]]

This is a lever. Leverage. Like Archimedes said, give me a lever long
enough, and I'll move the world. Any of you who put one page of one book
on the Internet, are going to move the world. Every time one of these
books goes out it's quite possible that in your life time, a billion
people could have it. Thousand--million--billion, that's the way we do
it. [ha ha] Right now if we have reached one to one and a half percent
of the world population with the books that we have, that means that
we've given away one _trillion_ electronic books. As of today. Ten years
from now, I would love it, to come back here, and tell you ... we had a
millions books and we had given'em to _fifteen_ percent of the world,
instead of only 1.5%. That would be a _quadrillion_ books.
Million--billion--trillion--quadrillion. Then I'm gonna be dead and
somebody else can do it. BUT when I go, my last project is going to be
to TRANSLATE all millions of those books into one 100 different
languages. I wanna get all of this to as many people as possible. I
think that what goes on in here between the years is of ultimate
importance and that the way we change the world is to change what people
can know. 

[[09:48]]

You go to history and all of the great changes came about because of
what people could know. There are several ways to look at this, I'm
gonna try a couple of them. I'm not very formal, even here. So, feel
free to raise your hand and say "Can you say something else" or "Can you
talk about something else". If you go like this I'll keep talking about
it and if you go like this I'll try something else. Ha! I'm very easy to
get along with. So anyway you want to guide me is fine. I have lots of
different ways to look at this. Whether we talk about it as leverage,
whether we talk about it as education whether we talk about it as
opportunity, whether we talk about it as Moore's law, the growth curve
everybody say..talks about, where computers double in power every 18
months. Project Gutenberg went from 5000 books to 10000 books in 18
months and 1 day. It'd be really great it we did it from 10000 to 20000
some time next year.

[[10:57]]

We are all volunteers. Nobody gets paid for this. Every once in a while
I get paid, but not for the last half a year. So it does just depend
whether people donate us any money. I prefer to spend money on equipment
and scanners rather than on people. One thing we drastically need here
for Project Gutenberg of Europe is copyright lawyers. I know hundreds of
times more about United States copyright than I ever ever wanted to
know. It's hard, and it's harder when the copyright law changes all the
time. We're very strict, we're famous, or you could say infamous for
making our people do copyright research. We get nasty grams, we call
them, nasty telegrams from very famous people, going [annoying voice]
"gna gna gna gnaaaa... You did my book" you know. And I got "I'm not in
your country!" ha ha ha! So I don't want to have a lot of that,
especially if we're gonna be wrong... oh... We have done so much
research that--so far--we haven't had to check anything back. I would
like for the Project Gutenberg of Europe to get at least 10000 with
_good, solid_ copyright research so we have no political hassles from
anybody. I want to establish a reputation. People don't fight with me
very much because I have a reputation of knowing what I'm talking about.
10 years ago they'd like to fight with me--they didn't know who I was.
Now that several giant colleges and countries have tackled me and gone
back with a bloody nose... they don't do that any more. Ha ha ha! I
wanna do the same kind of good, solid production for Project Gutenberg
of Europe. OK. So we NEED people who know the copyright law.

[[13:11]]

I'm an idealist, I'm a utilitarian, I... this is my whole career. This
is all that I do. I love doing it. I'll talk about this until you all go
home. Ha ha ha! As long as you talk back and I can keep getting a drink
of water [sips?], we just keep going.

[[13:33]]

The basic idea is very much like what Gutenberg and this unknown Korean
came up with, it's it's the idea that instead of making everything by
HAND... we make it with machines. The industrial revolution could never
have come about without this movable type idea, or something very much
like it. It didn't HAVE to be the first thing, if someone else had
invented interchangeable parts first, then somebody else would have
invented movable type. But as it was, somebody invented movable type,
and then somebody else said "Ha! We can make interchangeable parts out
of other things." I don't know how many of you study History. If I point
out something and it's just too obvious, boring, you just say "Shut up!
Go something else.

[[14:28]]

It was very very hard to replace a broken part before the industrial
revolution. Because all the pieces were made by hand and they were start
about with one piece and you made another piece that's fitting on that
piece another piece that's fitting on that piece another piece that's
fitting on that piece... and as long as it worked for YOU, that was
fine. But you couldn't take this piece out of this one and put it on
that one, because oh, this one was a little bigger, and that one was a
little smaller, this one was a little sideways... and OK! But it
increased the efficiency... ENORMOUSLY.

[[15:02]]

Before the industrial revolution, basically, NOBODY HAD ANYTHING.
Everybody was a PEASANT! Except for 1%... or something like that. And
then, all of a sudden, we have this MASS, MASS, MASS production. Of...
EVERYTHING! And all of a sudden we have a middle class. Ha! Never had a
middle class before. All of sudden... books, instead of costing as much
as the average family farm--which is what they did before Gutenberg--now
you could go to the marketplace in a little village, {out?} in the
middle of nowhere, 100 miles from the nearest place on the map. And
still, somebody would come in with a wagon, and a printing press ON the
wagon. And it would sell some books, and print on fliers and everything
for whatever they needed, for May day is coming and we're gonna have a
big celebration, don't forget to be there! It's, like, Sunday! Before
then, it all had to be written down by hand.

[[16:10]]

Now the IDEA... People, people try to make heroes out of the monks who
would sit down and spend an ENTIRE YEAR... copying... one book. But the
fact is it cost a FORTUNE. The MONK was... was one of the upper 1%. He
wasn't supposed to be wealthy. But he was one of the most educated
people. And you had to pay a year's salary to keep this guy writing the
stuff [[16:39]] {free it away?}. Had... It was, it was hard. I mean... I
go looking, when I'm travelling, for pre-Gutenberg books. And they're
very hard to find, because there weren't very many. Within.. the FIFTY
years surrounding the year 1500, there were more books printed than...
ALL THE REST OF THE HISTORY. 

[[17:02]]

I wouldn't doubt that within the 50 years surrounding this millenium,
there'll be more books published [than] throughout all of THAT history
{putting another?} 500 years added on AND... there's gonna be electronic
books. I have at home... DVDs with TEN THOUSAND books on'em. They cost
1$. 2/3 of a EUR. I couldn't bring'em with me, 'cause I didn't want to
get ARRESTED by the copyright police, I've left all at home. But we're
going to MAKE all of them here, with Project Gutenberg Europe. We have
half a dozen people, working on making lists of which books we can do in
Europe, and we will have... Next time I come here--hopefully you'll
invite me back---I will have a BOX of these, and you can all have one.
Because that's what I do when I'm in America. On the way here, I stopped
in San Francisco, and I gave away two MILLION electronic books. Then I
went accross the bridge, to Berkeley, and I gave away two million MORE
electronic books. ha ha ha! And it didn't cost as... how do... It costed
so little, we didn't add it up. But call it 2 or 300 $. Nothing,
nothing! And we went to librarians,

{XXX bad recording....}

[[18:36]]

I'm not bossy. I don't wanna tell them what to do, because they're doing
more than I can do. I just, I do it differently. We have some people who
scan the books, and some people prefer to type on. Because it's their
favorite book. You get a labour of love--it's what we call it--and you
get to read the book in a different way, when you type {in the end}.
For, for some of us it's lot of fun, it's not just work. I have to admit
there are days when it's like err, when it's like work... ha!... and
I it's more fun, err... Oui?

[[19:14]]

Unknown 1: Merci. Euh, si j'ai bien compris votre intervention, ce que
recherche votre objectif... I am sorry I am speaking in Engl... in
French. You are here in a French country, and you have to... 

[Michael Hart: That's why they're there!]

OK. 

[Michael Hart: I'm not getting {any sound?}...]
[You'll get it!]

OK. Donc euh, ça va? Non... Vous voyez comme c'est difficile, hein? Ah!
C'est bon. Donc euh...

[Michael Hart: ah ha ha! {No I can hear?} HIM, not you.]
[Ah!...]
[No no, you want English? Here!]
[You just have to turn there}
[Michael Hart: I can hear all right!]
[He wants English, not French!]

Est-ce que vous m'entendez en anglais?

[Go ahead!]
[Allez-y!]
[Il entend!]

Non il entend pas.

Michael Hart: I hear YOU. I do NOT hear her.

Unknown 1: Oh... Non, mais attends, écoute il faut qu'il... Hé! C'est le
problème des langues. Je suis très très heureux de cet incident. Parce
que ça permet de voir. Il y a un très très grand débat qui a eu lieu à
Genève, au sommet sur la société de l'information, sur les problèmes du
peu d'intérêt qu'on donne aux langues non anglaises. Et là je crois
qu'on a une démonstration sur le mépris, le peu d'importance, etc., qui
est donné à toutes les langues non anglaises et vous avez dit que votre
ambition dans l'avenir serait de traduire des livres de l'anglais vers
les autres langues, et j'espère des autres langues vers l'anglais. Ça
c'est un premier point.

Le deuxième point... That's all right? OK! Le deuxième point, c'est...
votre objectif si j'ai compris, vise à mettre les livres, pour ainsi
d... le savoir à la disposition du plus grand nombre. Le diffuser à
travers le monde en millions, en milliards, en milliers de milliards,
etc. C'est un objectif fantastique. Mais qui se situe, selon votre
démarche, en marge du marché et du libéralisme. Il faudrait que vous
nous expliquiez qu'est-ce que vous gagnez, qu'est-ce que gagne votre
projet à faire cet effort de diffusion à travers le monde, avec un accès
gratuit ou quasi-gratuit, deuxième point;

[Michael Hart: ha ha ha!]

Troisième point, même si à travers votre intervention, on a compris

Michael Hart: Can we go for the first two first? ha ha ha! I can...

Unknown 1: Well, OK, bien.

Michael Hart: I come back and... I've already lost the... I think I have
television.

[Voices asking the audience member to introduce himself]

Michael Hart: {mumble} well the TWO..

Unknown 1: Oui je suis... Sorry I present myself. I work for the UNDP.
But I am retired. I am economist. Je suis économiste, et je m'intéresse
beaucoup aux nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la
communication, voilà..

Aziz Habid?: Merci, merci beaucoup pour... Merci pour ces deux questions
déjà. On va demander à Michael Hart d'essayer de... d'y répondre. Je lui
rappelle les deux questions et en même temps je souhaiterais que chacun
d'entre nous se présente et d'essayer d'être bref pour qu'on puisse
donner une chance au plus grand nombre d'intervenir.

[[22:40]]

[Turning to Michael Hart]: The first question was about the...
linguistics. Translations.

Michael Hart: Well, I can...

Aziz Habid: English to other languages.

Michal Hart: Right, OK. I can do... all the books... from each language,
to each language. As many as we can do, until, you know... My dream is
that on January 1st of of some year, we do every book that went into the
public domain, from every language, and we have it translated to 100
different languages... I don't know how many total languages there are,
but 100 is a nice round number. I... We have 20 languages now, that we
have all books in, and we have at least one book where we have taken
certain things people wrote and translated it in 78 different languages.
This was just practice. Obviously, when we have 1,000,000 books to do,
we're going to need to be 10 years into the future, and we will be,
cause it'll take than long. But, then, hopefully, machine translation
will be worthwhile, to at least some degree. Personally, I think machine
translation right now is even worse than OCR (Optical Character
Recognition) was 10 years ago. We translate... There is a famous joke
than I re... most of you have heard. You start with "the spirit is
willing, and the flesh is weak" ([eyeing towards translators] this
should be fun for these guys [ah ha!]) and you translate that into
Russian and then you use the very same program to translate it back to
English, and "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" comes out
"the vodka is strong, and the meat is rotten". Because "spirit" in
English can be a a... a liquor, a strong drink. And "willing" can be
a... power, you have a certain motivation, a certain power, or it could
be strength. For an English speaker or a Russian speaker it's probably
very funny. I'm sure that some of the other languages they're doing
they're going "What the HECK is he talking about?" [laughs]. But that's
the whole POINT. The whole POINT is that is doesn't come out very well.

[[24:59]]

When I, when I f... did my first scanner, there was a machine... I... I
don't have anything here that's the right size, but it was as big as
a... BIG desk. And it cost... lots and lots of money, and you had to
sign up on a sheet to get to use it, and then you had to wait in line,
and to go a half-way accross the campus at the University of Illinois,
which was one of the huge universities, there probably weren't many of
those machines. And then I would scan the book, and then I would get a
disk back, and then I would take the disk home and put it on my computer
and then I would go "Yeah!" ha ha ha! After just TWO times of doing
this, this is "I can sit here and type this in. If you think of that
time it spent me before when I got up from my computer I went to that
machine, I did my work, I came back, this is... I could have typed all
that in! In the same amount of time! [chuckles] And we didn't have to
have a million dollar machine. Yet the reason that I'm here, and
hopefully that you're listening to me, is cause I'm a visionary. I can't
TELL you HOW to be a visionary. I wish I could. I think there's
something broken in my head.

[[26:17]]

The very DAY that I got on the Internet, I SAW the Internet... the way
it is now. EXCEPT for one thing: I wasn't very interested in sending
pictures and music. ha ha ha! Erm... It's not any efficient. Yes the
second question...

Aziz Habid: Second question is about the dissemination, and about...

Michal Hart: What's the profit?

Aziz Habid: Profit!

[[26:42]]

Michael Hart: Ya! People say that I am altruistic. Or they assume I'm
altruistic. And yet, there's not a single person who got more out of
Project Gutenberg than I did. And I'm not talking about money. ha ha ha
ha! I WANTED electronic books. The v, the v... BIG profit is that I
got'em. The big profit for everybody else, is they got'em too! ha ha ha!
Now, yes, that's my own private personal reason, and also, also I'm an
idealist in the sense that... today you can buy a TERABYTE--a trillion
characters--worth of disk drives... right over the counter. No warehouse
deal, no discount no ever. Right over the counter. For 350$. In the
United States. Just before I left, we bought a 1/6 of a terabyte for
60$. Just to say we did it, that's how I can say we did that, when I
came over here. You... {maybe?} you can buy a whole computer with a
terabyte in it for less than 1,000 dollars. And you could have EVERY
word in the Library of Congress. Some people argue it might take two
terabytes, but I know a lot more about the Library of Congress than a
lot of people, and a LOT of what they have, is pamphlets and pictures
and flyers and stuff, and it's not words and... I'm perfectly happy to
do all the graphics and all the music and everything, but my own
personal measure, how *I* measure it, is is... words. OK? Scanning
things is {raw alphabXXX?}... plain scans is not my particular cup of
tea. Becau... And people always ask me why? You can't SEARCH a plain
scanned page, you can't quote it, you can't correct an error on it,
[chuckle] it takes 100 times as much space in your computer, if you're
downloading then and flipping the pages, you can't just go
flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip.

[[29:03]]

Believe it or not, I do Believe it or not, I do all my work on the
Internet at 14.4 kilo-baud. The old slow modem. My computer doesn't do
pictures. I don't have to do pictures. I do e-mail. I... I got a
thousand e-mails from the time I got... went from Brussels to here. And
I answered all the ones I had to just before I came here this morning
[chuckle]. The efficiency, that.. what we call a cost-benefit ratio, in
terms of money, and in terms of time, is... E...NORMOUS! ha ha ha!

[[29:45]]

I... When I went to school, we had marble steps in the library. And
these steps have GROOVES in them. I'm sure you've been to the Sorbonne
and you have marble steps that ar... they're worn down, right? From {all
of?} the students running up and down the steps. I put some of those
grooves in there. ha ha ha! I went up and down {of all'em with?} the
library like crazy. And it drove me crazy because you go to do your
homework and you have 20 books you wanna get and you know, you can only
get 5 of'em? And 5 of'em, nobody knows where they are, 5 of'em checked
out by some professor who's NEVER going to bring them back, right? ha ha
ha!

[[30:28]]

These books are open 24 hours a day, they're never in for rebinding, the
pages are never torn out, you never have to worry about whether the
library's open, or bringing them back when they're due, or paying
overdue fines, and you can put them all on this one little disc like
that and carry it with you in your laptop. I think this is what we...
(the cats meow? ha ha ha! the cats was here and{...?}) This is, this is
great stuff. We should have... You... I'm sure you have same kids at
great schools, et junior high schools, with these book bags. And the
kids are like Quasimodo with the book bags.

[[31:06]]

Speaking of which, just before I left to come over here, I checked to
see what our NEWEST book was, and it's _Eugénie Grandet_, par Honoré de
Balzac. IN FRENCH! ha ha ha ha! En français! At the... the VERY newest
Project Gutenberg... and this is... didn't stack the deck I swear, it
just happened that way. I'm, I'm a... 

[[31:37]]

This is something else I should tell you. People ask me all the time how
I manage to do the things I do. And the first thing I start out, is
telling them I'm lucky. Don't ever trust anybody who did this much work,
and they don't tell you they were lucky. It doesn't matter how smart
they are, how hard they work, I mean those are... the requirements! But
I could, I would not be here today without being very very lucky.

[[32:09]]

I'm sure... I'm... I'm {tackled to get?} a lot of questions, but I'm
sure the people are gonna ask me, how I {found? thought?} this up in the
first place? Now the profit, again, I thought was for everybody. I don't
care if I make any money off of it, OK? The profit is we have a BETTER
WORLD, if you think just that, ...

[[32:25]]

Aziz Habid: That's very clear, thank you. We come back to this
gentleman. Then there are a couple of colleagues who want to ask
questions. Then I would like to invite Mike to take like 15 minutes to
explain to us in a... very... clear manner how this project is being run
today. We want to understand how things are being done under this
project.

[[32:47]]

Unknown 1: Bien. Mer... Merci beaucoup. Je voudrais très très
rapidement, euh... ... lui dire que... son approche est très très bonne
pour les pays développés. Y'a pas de doute, les gens qui ont accès à
Internet et qui peuvent télécharger des livres et/ou des... choses de ce
genre. J'ai compris dans son intervention qu'il s'intéresse aussi, il a
dit qu'y avait d'autres supports que le support Internet, donc je
suppose que c'est des DVD, des des CD-ROM, dans lequel on peut
sauvegarder des livres, et pour lesquels les gens qui n'ont pas accès à
Internet peuvent les lire avec moins de moyens. Mais même ceux-là, à mon
avis, parce que tout le monde ne lit pas. Il doit comprendre qu'en
Afrique il y a des MILLIONS de personnes qui sont analphabètes. Et là,
peut-être qu'il, est-ce qu'il réfléchit à des supports sonores?
C'est-à-dire des livres euh qu'on peut écouter... ça va pour les
analphabètes, et ça va aussi pour les mal voyants? Merci beaucoup, et je
m'excuse d'avoir été long.

[[33:52]]

Michael Hart: Every book that we have--at least in English so far--is
available IMMEDIATELY... The SECOND, the very SECOND we put it up for
you to READ it, it's up there for you to LISTEN to it. We're gonna have
to work on that for all of the rest of the languages. And we also have,
you know, PDAs, Palms, like that... We hope to get millions of those and
give them away with electronic books in them. During my 15 minutes
({other presentation?}), I'll grab one of those and I'll show it to you.
As, you know... We call this question the digital divide--that's what we
call it in the United States.

[[34:37]]

In the United States, I go to garage sales. I understand these aren't
great big items over here, but when people move to another city in the
United States--which they do a lot, especially in the big
university--they sell a LOT of their stuff before they go. And... I, I
have 150 computers, and not ONE was ever bought new, off-the shelf. ha
ha ha! I have bicycles... almost everything I own comes from these
things. And I... what I would tell you is that last year... I saw... I
have my little Palm and I'll show you. And last year I saw THREE of
these at garage sales for ONE DOLLAR a piece, and a couple more for two
dollars and three dollars. [[35:30]]And I see {wholecon?} desktop
computers for 5$, 10$, 15$, 20$, and if you come back afterwards and it
didn't sell, they'll give it to you for free, just to get rid of it.

[[35:42]]

Now collecting all that stuff and organizing it enough and putting {up?}
stuff, in other languages, that's half the work. BUT I'm {gonna?} keep
working on this, and I certainly have as a goal [[35:56]]before my
{delighted?} time is up, to go to Africa and go to other places, and
unload whole planes full of stuff, IN their languages, AND... where you
could learn to speak, and learn to read, from whatever {is?} in the
little boxes. Right? I... it's, don't... All of my stuff is a dream
until after it happens. ha ha ha!

[[36:20]]

Pierre Nicolas: Pierre Nicolas. Euh. Is that all right? Bien. Euh.
Pierre Nicolas. I'm a business consultant. I would like to focus on the
on the economical or the financial dimension of your project. My first
question is how do you personally earn your money?

Michael Hart: ha ha ha ha ha!

[laughs]

Pierre Nicolas: That's the first question. Second question is: what are
the financial sources of your project?

Michael Hart: What are the...?

Pierre Nicolas: The Financial sources or... what is the funding of your
project?

Michael Hart: ha ha ha ha ha!

Pierre Nicolas: Euh... My third question is how do you imagine that the
movement is going to spread wider, because of course you want, you want
a lot of people and institutions to join into your project. So what is
the reason or the motivation that they would have in order to join it?
And last, you know that there are significant institutions which are
{Corebase?} or {Gate-E?} who are specialized in dealing with i'mages
and...

Michael Hart: With which?..

Pierre Nicolas: Euh... Corebase...

Michael Hart: 'Images!

Pierre Nicolas: From from... i'mages, yes... Corebase... from Bill
Gates... Bill Gates owns it, etc. And of course {their ideas?} are to
sell. Either the right or the derived products of it. So how do you
integrate this kind of consideration in your project?

[[37:43]]

Michael Hart: You want me to go backwards or forewards? ... That we
start at the beginning or the end? [laughs]

I mean, I could start with Bill Gates. I went to Microsoft the day they
unveiled one of their browsers. And as part of the demonstration I asked
them to type in "Bill Gates"... and "Michael Hart". Ha ha! I got half as
many hits at Bill Gates. Not bad, for somebody who works out of his
basement, at 14.4. Ha ha!

[[38:14]]

I dec... I figure out I'm doing OK, and I'll keep trying to do better.
The odd, that hard part is, is I get old, and I'm gonna d.., you know...
I've been doing this for 33 years, I won't live another 33 years. I'm a
lot older than I look, by the way. For the, ha ha! I'm pushing 60, so...

[[38:36]]

Now back to the first one, what do *I* do for money? Err... When I was
young, I... repaired electronics. I built, I built hi-fis, stereos,
radios, TVs... and I got quite famous at this. I never read a book on
electronics of my life, err... I have what th... a "green thumb"? Do you
{guys say?} that kind of term? Err, I can put my hand, I can just feel
what's wrong with it and I can fix it. And when I STOPPED doing that I
was making 200$ an hour. And this was... yeow... 10-20 years ago... when
200$ was worth a lot more than it is now.

[[39:18]]

Err... I never spend the money I have, I just save it. So... I never
have to worry about what's happening... with money. I don't, I don't
"deal" with money. I'll think about money... I don't do paperwork. I
will go years with making no money, and then I'll make a bunch of money,
I'll just save it, and I'll go a bunch of more years with {none?}... I
don't buy anything that's expensive. I, I buy... My tastes are very
simple. Sébastien can tell you... he's trying to feed me. You have to
feed me meat and potatoes and bread and butter and eggs. That's it! ha
ha ha ha!

[[39:56]]

OK, now that, that's 1 and 4. Now 2 and 3? [Did you write down 2 and 3?
No...] [No.. ha ha ha ha!]

Pierre Nicolas: What are the financial sources of your err...

[[40:07]]

Michael Hart: Ah! Erm... Project Gutenberg still reflects my personality
a little bit... Sadly to say. C'est dommage! Erm... They don't deal with
money either! Ha ha ha ha ha! When somebody gives us money, we buy a
scanner. We have a VERY fancy scanner in Las Vegas,