We have, as a bedrock value in our society, long agreed on thevalue of open access to information, and recognize the problems thatarise with attempts to restrict access to and development of knowledge.

As Francis Bacon warned long ago, ‘One man’s notes will little profit another.’

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some booksare to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to bechewed and digested."

Francis Bacon explained succinctlythat notes could be made either “by epitome or abridgement” (that is, by sum-marizing the source) or “by heads or commonplaces” (that is, by copying a pas-sage verbatim or nearly so and storing it in a notebook under a commonplaceheading for later retrieval and use). Bacon considered the latter method “of farmore profit and use,” and most note-taking advice focused on this practice of ex-cerpting.46

In addition, FrancisBacon compared one of his notebooks to a “merchant’s waste book, where toenter all manner of remembrance of matter, form, business, study, touching my-self, service, others; either sparsim or in schedules, without any manner of re-straint.”3

That is why Francis Bacon was rather skeptical about the possibility that excerpts might be shared among scholars. His opinion was that ‘in general, one man’s Notes will little profit another, because one man’s Conceit doth so much differ from another’s; and because the bare Note itself is nothing so much worth, as the suggestion it gives the Reader’.47

Francis Bacon, for instance, thought that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."

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acon favored the latter as “of far more profitW and use” Squotedin “tpW” pY ae‘TY

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example from your colleague, Victor Lee. We began a recent talk about Annotation.d-undefined, .lh-undefined { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) !important; }.d-undefined, .lh-undefined { background-color: rgba(57, 0, 0, 0.5) !important; }1Remi Kalir with Victor’s tweet. His perspective on access, ownership, and power helped us to discuss a tension between readers who can and do write annotation —whether in books or the built environment— and the cultural rites of annotation, often unwritten, that also constrain where and how notes are added to everyday texts.

Francis Bacon. Angus Vine, “Commercial Commonplacing: FrancisBacon, the Waste-Book, and the Ledger,”EMS16(2011),197–218, analyzesBacon’s manuscript ‘Comentarius Solutus’ which includes comments onorganizing his twenty-eight notebooks, including several commonplacebooks, one of which is extant (British Library, MS Harley7017, fols83-129v); Bacon’s proposal of a method of note-taking that followed the mer-cantile practice of double-entry bookkeeping reconciled his desire to makethe commonplace book engage with not only words but also the world.

New Atlantis was the title Francis Bacon selected for his speculative story of a society living with the benefits and challenges of advanced science and technology. Bacon, a founder and champion of modern science, sought not only to highlight the potential of technology to improve human life, but also to foresee some of the social, moral, and political difficulties that confront a society shaped by the great scientific enterprise.

Long before Vannevar Bush, Francis Bacon cited Seneca to describe a similar ambition for his scientific method, which he hoped would “abridge the infinity of individual experience ... and remedy the complaint of vita brevis, ars longa.”