Sunday, May 03, 2009

Like Drinking from a Fire Hose

Since it's hard to find time to explore the 27 Things during the week, what with work and eating and sleeping and all, I'm trying to whip through a week's worth of stuff in just a weekend. Whew! So after watching the Otter tutorial and reading the Beginners' Guide about Delicious, I checked out that site and came to the conclusion I don't really have a burning need for any more tools for social bookmarking at the present time. Maybe later? Right now, my nosiness is more than satisfied by Facebook. I did register on Technorati, sucked in by the chance to "claim" my blog. But after an initial delay due to something called pinging I was given Error Code 401 and told to contact Technorati Support. There were 7 steps laid out for me to follow in order to rectify the problem -- and then I came to my senses. Guess my blog will just have to be an orphan...

And then I read that loooong thing about the future of libraries. The one thing that will probably stick with me is the term "technohustle." I felt a bit like I'd wandered into a convention of used car salesmen or telemarketers. Why the hard sell? Of COURSE things are changing and will continue to change. The technology today is way beyond what most of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams a few years ago, truly exciting! And it continues to evolve, rapidly. Does that necessarily mean we will not recognize libraries in five years...and would that be a good thing? There has been huge change in the past 5-10 years, but when I walk into a library, I still know it's a library....and I'm glad!

A few more tidbits I gleaned: "There are Second Life subscribers who spend more than 40 hours a week online." (Those are not well people. Get them some help.)

In the future, library patrons "will expect librarians to be Virtual Reality coaches and will collect librarian 'superstars' based on 'buzz' and customer ratings." (Really?! Well, I predict that in the future, many library patrons will still like to read quaint things called BOOKS and will have an appreciation for librarians who do, too.) Do any of you remember a couple of decades ago -- no, longer than that--when everyone was confidently predicting that by now we'd all be whizzing around, skimming merrily over the earth in flying vehicles like the Jetsons had? Well, I was about to say that never came true, but then I Googled it and look at this!

Okay, enough ranting. Did you see the article in the New York Times last week called Immaterialism? It's about all the nonexistent "things" people give each other on Facebook and similar sites and how some folks have figured out how to make money off that weird urge.

1 comment:

  1. I don't libraries as we know them are going to go away. We will clearly continue redirecting more resources toward computers and digital content but books aren't going away. I feel personally as though the real direction is a move toward providing a comfortable community space in addition to the traditional services we already provide.

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