FYIFrance EXTRA: the new French cave paintings, already online!

Anyone looking for a dramatic example of the power of the nets might
look at WorldWideWeb / Mosaic address

	http://www.culture.fr/gvpda.htm

which was announced yesterday.

This is a link, on the French Ministry of Culture's homepage, which
leads to text and four images -- and what hopefully will become even
more images and online text -- about the recent Combe d'Arc (Arde`che)
prehistoric cave art discovery: caves larger and perhaps more beautiful
than those at Lascaux.

There are two things remarkable to me about this resource. First, of
course, is that it describes what may become one of the more
significant discoveries in all art history. But in addition, and even
more interesting perhaps to people here, thanks to networking's wonders
it has been only a month since the cave paintings were found and
suddenly everyone in the online world can read about and even see
them.

Compare this time lag -- a month -- to the time it has taken for us to
gain access to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Compare it to the notorious time -
lags on the publication of national bibliographies historically: these
too might be sped up now, like everything else which takes advantage of
the nets. This is not, of course, to ignore the non - technical aspects
of the publication process, which were notorious in the case of the
Scrolls. Nor is it to minimize the dangers of too - rapid publication,
pace the defenders of rapid access. But, a month!

The caves were found in December, the French Minister of Culture
announced the discovery January 17, the images and text appeared online
on January 24. The homepage appears to have been assembled by Michel
Bottin, and it was announced by Bruno Mannoni, both of the Ministry. If
you don't yet have Mosaic, or its NetScape / NetCruiser / etc.
incarnations, lynx will get you at least to the text. But you really
should see the images online -- not Kodansha quality yet, but one can
feel that coming -- to appreciate the full significance of the event.

***

FYIFrance e - newsletter        ISSN 1071 - 5916
 
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