David Barry’s posthaven

Here are two time lines I have just come across in a book I have recently been reading. 

Arpanet, main for runner of the Internet, set up in 1969

Internet starts 1974

The web starts 1991

Google 1998

From the invention of writing to the invention of the Codex (ie Book in the format we know it, rather than, say, a scroll.) 4, 3000 years

From the Codex to moveable type 1, 150 years 

From moveable type to the Internet 524 years

from the internet to the first search engines (gopher I suppose) 17 years

From the first search engines to google 7 years.

Something, it would seem is speeding up.

(It was  a book of essays by Robert Darnton called "The Case for Books". The essays, most of which appeared originally in the New York Review of Books, are basically about various issues regarding books in the digital age. If you want more details about the book here is the link to Amazon:-

Its a book I enjoyed a lot; and as it is a set of essays it would be really good for the train. Of for reading in bed at night, which is the way I read it. If I had time, I would write a review, but for the curious here is one written by some else on the internet, which is in addition of course, to the reviews on Amazon.

I dont have the book to hand now, I borrowed it from some else, and read it as a paperback.)