Week 6, thing 15. My mind has just been blown.

Okay. Maybe it's just the coffee but my thoughts are racing like mad after what I've just seen. First I watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g which completely rocked my world. I loved it! At first it was a little confusing. But it was liberating. And a little scary. ( also I immediately thought of the Internet achieving sentience. Now, ... um, that is a little scary. Mostly because I think the Internet as a sentient being would be obsessed with sex. Frankly.) It really reminded me of that commercial with the business man in a suit going into an old fashioned diner. He asks about the old fashioned looking juke box. Obviously being sarcastic, he enquires about any classical music "on that thing." He is informed that this jukebox plays every piece of music, ever recorded, anywhere. he is in a state of shock.

This is kind of how I felt after looking at this video and reading some of the library 2.0 perspectives. The future is not coming. The future is here. And we have to adapt.
I liked all of them, But "Away from the “icebergs” http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm , and "To a temporary place in time..." http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/6.htm were my favorites. Mostly because they were a little more ... user friendly then the others. I liked the first because it broke down the issues in a really simple way that speaks to the libraries issues. But at the same time that I appreciated Mr. Anderson's points, I also had counter points. We can't afford to have everything in physical form anymore. We just can't. Libraries are relying increasingly on databases and e. texts. But... power outages happen. Connection problems happened. My branches computers were down 4 hours yesterday. people came into the branch and literally walked right out again when they saw the Internet is down. I felt powerless. Without our handy Dewie decimal cheats I would not even have known where anything was.
His point about user education also rang true. We DO need to make our systems easier and more intuitive. BUT... making the interface more user friendly is not the end of even the beginning. It's the middle. Education is necessary. I have patrons come in all the time that think ever terminal has its own e- mail address that they can uses. More and more people are getting back into the job market and trying to apply for job applications. Which absolutely So, my position is... We need easier technology AND education . Which means more money assigned to that and perhaps a staff position whose only job is that. We actually have that at one of our branches. A computer lab and a full time instructor. We need more of that. His last point, I have no reservations about. We have to go to the patron . Because we must help them to understand. Everyone can use the Internet. it's how you use the Internet that matters. And also, books. Books are awesome.

"to a temporary place in time" is so cool because it discusses the transitory nature of ... all things really. Library 2.0? The Internet is buzzing about web 3.0! The next step. And the next step. And another. We need to be flexible, adaptive, attentive, and ... CAUTIOUS. Because as I said in a discussion of hypothetical voice activated computers technology VOX , we need to understand one thing. New technology is beneficial ( potentially at least) but we must adopt it with disowning our current technology. I picked up a book. This, I said, is 100 % EMP protected. it requires no power source. It cannot be hacked. It can be altered but is readily apparent. We must never abandon this!!! For that day will sound the death knell of knowledge.