A farmer at the turn of the century saw that the horseless carriage could get him to market and back more quickly, but had no inkling that the same vehicle would send an interstate highway through his pasture and change his way of life forever. It takes a generation or three to get past the point of depending on the old medium for a way to think about the new and to the point of exploiting the new medium artfully in its own right.
The dream of the virtual library comes forward now, I therefore submit, not because it promises an exciting future, but because it promises a future that will be just like the past only better and faster. No one can deny the usefulness of such conceptions, but the limitations of their usefulness must be recognized as well.
James J. O’Donnell, The Virtual Library: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed, 1994
