Scary Stories by Robin Sloan
Digitization and Disaggregation.
Friday’s plenary session, “Things Fall Apart,” presented by Robin Sloan (Current TV), was interesting, funny, thought-provoking, scary, and exciting (just like my driving sometimes…!). Robin provided us with a speculative (and dramatic) look at how the trend toward self-publishing (by way of blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.) could have a major impact on how news and information are created and disseminated in the future.
Some highlights of Robin’s presentation include:
- an airing of the film he made (while he was working at Poynter) with Matt Thompson, EPIC 2014, “a future history of the media.” Although the film was originally intended for journalists, they eventually posted it on the Internet. Basically, the film tells the story of what could happen as more and more information, especially news, is disseminated online. One outcome is the formation of Googlezon (Amazon and Google), the eventual demise of the NYTimes Online in light of the ability for people to tailor what they receive as news to suit their own personal interests. EPIC, “Evolving Personalised Information Construct,” is the final system highlighted in the film, a way for everyone to be able to communicate via a variety of methods (blogs, podcasts), to customize Web content based on personal preference, etc.
- a slide presentation about how society might look in 2016, complete with garage movements and an Access Army dedicated to radical preservation–preserving information and making sure it is accessible for free (go librarians!).
After the second “scary” story, several audience members engaged Robin (and the rest of us) in an interesting dialog about technology and the future in relation to libraries.
A question was asked about Wikipedia, and Robin made a great analogy to the Oxford English Dictionary and how it was created (remember The Professor and the Madman?) and how Wikipedia is not much different.
Someone else brought up the idea of privacy and how it seems to not be a concern for the current generation of users (e.g., MySpace, etc., and how freely people post every aspect of their lives online for the world to see). Robin suggested that technology works because people don’t care about privacy.
The idea of disaggregation was discussed in the context of some people’s tendency to expose ourselves only to those who agree with us (i.e., narrow-mindedness).
Robin mentioned the “I.V. theory” - “I’ve got Google with me all of the time on my cell phone and that changes my relationship to what I need to learn and what I need to remember.”
Someone asked what we could do to reach the generation of people who don’t feel they need to come to the library. Should we be on MySpace? (See my other post about libraries on MySpace). Robin thought it was a good idea.
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