a few steps together

[Nick Arnett]

>In this day and age,  I think  librarians or technical people  don't
>have a premium on how information is managed, made accessible etc. In
>this age I really wonder what the core competency of librarians is -
>you hear people say that librarians can help people navigate through a mass
>of information etc. but that maybe because librarians created these
>systems in the first place.
>
>Anyway Paul Saffo sums it up in a 'Wired' article - It's the context...
>http://www.hotwired.com/wired/2.03/departments/idees.fortes/context.html

Paul and I tend to see very much eye-to-eye on this stuff.  It's been a
couple of years since I came to the conclusion that multiple points of view
will be needed to take advantage of the opportunities created by personal
computers and the Internet.  I usually think of three -- technologists,
librarians and scholars, and publishers.  I'm still convinced that all
three need to participate in the design of new information systems.

The main point I wanted to make is that on an emotional level, it might
seem a bit unfair that the technologists, having the least advanced
technology (despite the fact that it's called "high" technology!), tend to
compromise the least.

I think I've said this on the list previously, but it's worth repeating --
if you're intrigued by this, I'd recommend Elizabeth Eisenstein's books on
the printing press as an agent of change.  She argues that it was the
partnerships among similar groups that brought about creative change
directly in the production of books; other change was brought about by the
easy availability of diverse points of view.  There's an interesting
related idea that cultural collision is a trigger for creativity (it's also
a trigger for genocide and such; I don't mean to imply a positive or even
neutral role).  Of course, in early modern Europe, the diversity offered by
printers helped people see beyond the church's then-corrupted viewpoint
(Luther's theses lit a flame war after he posted them to the Wittenberg ftp
door); today the diversity is in opposition to advertising-based media
(which also raise money by offering distraction, salvation and damnation).
I'm finally free to start writing a book on this area.

Nick