I love the Internet (2)* - because of serendipity

There have been posts along the way of 23 Things that have referred to learning through browsing. As my research penchant has infiltrated my professional and personal life for … my lifetime, I have come across items which thrill me, satisfy my curiosity, lead me to ponder indefinitely and cause me to say YES, I am correct, the latter as I try simultaneously to be humble.

My google alert has given me this blog which has given me the above and in spades:

http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/

[I am not sure why the link does not work - shall try to correct later]


. There is so much intellectual quality and variety that I am overwhelmed. I want to share some of the gems with all my fellow travellers and will eventually convert the elements to T Card (transaction card) summaries. (My long conversations with my friends usually have agenda items, listed on the metaphorical t cards.)

Here are a couple of snippets:



George Steiner recently argued that progress in the “hard” sciences and technology (technosciences, Hottois would say, since he claims they are now inseparable) opens new paths into the future, while progress in the humanities and social sciences leads to deeper understanding of the past, which is to say of ourselves. Part of that work of understanding must be understanding technology, not just past technologies, but today’s and our imaginations for tomorrow’s as well. Only when we understand can we decide whether or not some change is progress or regress] Yet our understanding of what happens today will certainly change as the consequences of today’s actions gradually unfold. Like the inventors of DDT, the inventors of information technologies have almost no grasp of what they are actually doing and what these technologies will mean to future generations. Our understanding can never be “once and for all” because the future will reveal what we could not imagine, much less know, today.

For Hottois, Virilio and Ellul the development and use of technologies of any sort must be accompanied by critical examination from as many perspectives as life provides. Without that critical activity, we shall be submitting ourselves blindly to a truly archaic servitude; technology as a “god”is far more cruel and inhuman than the divinities, priests, kings and tyrants of the past precisely because of the power and efficacy of our technologies. It is not by accident that this activity—critical inquiry in pursuit of understanding—happens to be—or at least formerly was—the raison d’être for the existence of the academic library. And I argue and urge that librarianship be firmly rooted in that activity and not simply a chase to learn how to use the latest or the most popular technologies on the market As Andrew Abbott put it, ” the future of serious library scholarship lies in a critically constructive and intense engagement with technology, not a running from it or a welcoming embrace.” Librarianship always involves an interpretation, a symbolic accompaniment of technologies, not simply their use.
“Technology waits for no one” Ms. Mercado claims, but technology is not going anywhere. WE are going somewhere, even if we do not know where, and we make technologies to aide us in doing what it is that we want to do. It is that “we” that we must not forget, for it is that same “we” that brings us both GoogleBooks and the Gulag. Among librarians, discussions of the Internet, the Semantic Web, Library2.0 and so on are all too often evidence that we are not engaged in the lucid, critical examination of our ideas and their incarnation in technologies and techniques, but rather irrationally and archaically enslaved to the magic and miracles hawked in the marketplace.


At your leisure I recommend a viewing - it takes time.


• See: http://saraj23things.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-love-internet.html