Virtual scholarship: the lure of the fourth dimension

            Duden had been coming to manuscript libraries for many years and he was struck by the declining number of readers he encountered in the manuscript reading rooms. Even at the Vatican Library he noticed fewer people, and he missed the random conversations that often arose over lunch or coffee. Now the rooms were sparsely filled, although the libraries had just opened after the long summer break.

            He wondered whether the absence of colleagues was due to the increasing digital access to manuscripts – had not the Laurenziana Library digitized its entire Pluteo shelf-list? And it was at this point, he says, that his amazing adventure began.

            Duden had known for some time the scholar Stuben: he too worked in the libraries and had great success in publishing what he claimed were the erotic letters of Giovanni Boccaccio. Stuben combined research with a way with words. He was very engaging in conversation and Duden often sought him out.

            One day in the restaurant Del Fagioli near the BNCF, he overheard Stuben talking about the increasing digitized way of learning. “We are now virtual scholars,” he said triumphantly. Duden was unsure whether he was speaking seriously, but he ran up to him outside the restaurant, eager to know more about his views and whether they accorded with his own.

            Stuben eyed him in silence and then told him that he agreed with his observations on the empty reading rooms wholeheartedly. But did Duden know that there were virtual libraries where one could enter and travel in the fourth dimension, and transcend time and space? Technology was now so advanced that scholars could access these libraries and have ready access to all materials of all ages – past, present, and future! Scholarship now is making a quantum leap, so that learning proceeds not only faster but also more deeply: Leonardo’s discoveries seem like mere child’s play, he concluded.

            Duden was beside himself with excitement. Where is this library? How might he access it? It’s not simple, Stuben replied. But there is a way for someone as accomplished as you. You must wait until the library closes. Then you can enter the manuscript room and discover the fourth dimension, where all learning will be open to you.

            Duden could hardly believe his ears. He followed Stuben’s instructions, waiting in the library bar – really, a series of vending machines – in the basement. As the library drew quiet and dark, he carefully ascended the stairs past the tortured bust of Antonio Magliabechi up to the second floor and the consultation rooms. He saw no one in the hallway until he reached the door.

There he confronts someone whom, at the first instance, he imagines was a clerk or the night staff, who would demand he leave the library immediately. But the fellow – short, he remembers, and unshaven – does no such thing. He expresses no surprise when Duden says he wished to enter: it seems to Duden that he has been expecting him. His mood changes instantly, from anxiety to excitement, and he feels as he were about to enter the other, awaited realm, when that fellow asks the fateful question:

            “Password?”

            Password! Stuben had told him nothing about a password. Flustered, he tries to remember his password to access the catalogy and internet of the library. That password is long and a combination of perhaps ten letters and numbers; he has it copied on a document on his computer. He suggests one answer, then another, trying different combinations and always conscious of his uncertainty and haphazard guesses. The fellow stands there and shakes his head and says, after several tries, “Time is up.”

            Deeply disconsolate, Duden is shown the door, and proceeds down the steps, hardly noticing the flowing traffic and the street noise. He crosses over to the Arno and walks toward the Ponte alle Grazie, remembering how happy he had been only a short time earlier, when he imagined himself a virtual scholar in a virtual library. The things he might have learned – the fame he might have enjoyed! That vision has left him, and he gradually awakes to the sounds around him: the scattered voices in various languages, the footsteps on the stones, the smell of the river, dank and fishy, the breeze that cools him a few degrees as he walks, aimlessly he thought, through the bustle of people dining outside and enjoying a late aperitivo.

            I broke his narrative to ask what might have happened. Was this a great trick by Stuben, playing him for a fool? He did not know for sure. He saw Stuben the next day at his table, regaling his companions with a story about someone’s foolishness, and he thought he recognized in the group the man who stopped him outside the reading room. He went up to Stuben afterward, and he grew serious, he said, insisting that he told him he needed a password, and that he had simply forgotten it.

Nonetheless, Duden said, it all ended well, and in a surprising way. He continued:

            When he arrived at the Ponte alle Grazie to cross over to San Niccolò, where he had been staying, he stood for a time watching the water flow beneath him, and then gazing at the stars above, by contrast immobile and bright in the heavens. He noticed a woman nearby doing the same, and she turned and said, “It’s very beautiful.” She was younger than he was, wearing a bright orange coat and glasses, whose rims seemed blue in the evening light. Her remark, common but true, drew his agreement and the two began to talk. She asked him what he was doing in Florence and he told her, and she said nothing in response. It was his turn, he felt, to continue the casual, awkward conversation and he discovered that she was a poet (“of sorts,” she said), who sought inspiration from the city streets. “While you are in the library,” she said, “I am exploring neighborhoods,” from San Frediano to the Campo di Marte. He mentioned that his history work required these visits, in order to commune with past authors, but that technology had transformed his craft into a virtual association of scholars. The reach of research had expanded even as the personal contact with colleagues had diminished.

            She shrugged and asked what he meant by “virtual.” When he said it indicated a contrast to actual, meaning long-distance contact through digital technology, she laughed and said that it was a strange use of the term “virtual.” “The soul is by nature expansive,” she added. “It always has been, even as technology has changed. It communes with the past, present, and future at the same time, without technology, using only the power of language.”

            Now he thought this was strange. What do you mean? How is this possible?

            “Look at the river below us. How many people before this time and after will stand here and watch its movement? We watch the same river and yet it is not the same. The river has witnessed the Plague, the Medici, Machiavelli and Michelangelo, countless wars and trysts, and it shares all this history with us, just as we share our history with those here yesterday, tomorrow, next year, or twenty years from now. The stars above? They fascinated Galileo and will continue to draw the dreams of thinkers and scientists long after we are gone. Our conversation now may seem trivial, a passing moment, but it connects our lives with a greater array than technology can ever provide us. This virtual network has more virtue, more power, than anything the digital domain or artificial intelligence can create, however useful they seem to be.”

            While she was talking, Duden looked at the river, flowing ever westward toward Pisa, and then at the stars floating above the Ponte Vecchio in their infinite horizon. This may be a trick, he thought, but it’s a greater trick than the one by Stuben. His mind flew from Florence to Pisa, creating armies and merchants on the landscape, before returning to his spot in the dark on the bridge. When he looked over, she was gone, and he went home with her words.