Ex Libris...

• Autore: Marc Lauritsen
• Pagine: 141-146

Page 141

I'm a partner in a mid-sized law firm In Boston, Massachusetts. The year is 1997.

My Septium computer, which I call Sam, runs at 1.3 gigahertz, and can display its output on a flexible, 2 ounce notepad, my watch, the full surface of my desk, or any one of my office walls. Sam talks to me, and I to him. Our central server stores 45 terabytes of information all of which is accessible instantaneously by any computer on our global network.

I can communicate with our offices in Johannesburg, Prague, Katmandu, and Hanoi at 600 megabytes per second for file transfer or multimedia videoconferencing. Links to several commercial data wholesalers make virtualiy every word of every case, statute, regulation, book, article, and commentary available to us immediately. We have teams of knowbots careening around the Internet gathering relevant intelligence. Some of my colleagues are trying out the latest virtual reality legal research systems. (We're a little behind the times because it has been almost a year since our most recent technology upgrade.)

Clients are fully plugged into our computing system, and have come to expect real time in-person attention on short notice and 24-hour access to our non-confidential information resources. We and they have become sc immersed in our information enwonment that it has become transparent. Over 40% of our revenue derives from clients paying to access our online knowledge resources.

Since I am rotating through the firm's Library and Information Systems committee, I've agreed to meet with a salesperson from Ace Publishing Company. She's here with her new catalog of law books and has brought along a review copy of Ace's latest tome on healthcare privacy torts, which she drops with a thud on my desk. I guess she didn't notice that my office is bookless. Sam the Computer perks up: ´Shall I call for security, sir?ª

Page 142

Actually, I'm not a partner in a mid-sized Boston firm, and the year is not 1997. (I bet you're relieved to hear that.) I left a hybrid career of law practice and clinical teaching almost ten years ago to do research and development in legal informatics and the technology of law practice, in the spirit of this Special Issue, I would like to contribute some informal remarks about how aspects of the revolution in the technology of text may play out in the context of the legal profession.

@X-Books

There are many candidates for the name of the next generation book. We've heard about the Dynabook, PowerBook, and SuperBook. Vendors now offer ActiveBooks, Beta Books, Expanded Books, Living Books, and TurboBooks. (There are also plenty of names that don't include the archaic word ´bookª, such as textbase and infobase.) Perhaps we should talk about X-books in this age of the ´Generation Xª. Or ex-books. Whatever...