Monday, September 24, 2007
final thoughts
Despite my often sardonic tone on these posts, this exercise has born more fun than painful. I'm just not entirely convinced of the applicability of many of these tools to the job of librarian, apart from the informational ones. A lot of this stuff is part of the tech-gimmick revolution, where our lives are made more complicated, not simpler, by digital technology that does little more than feed our narcissism, furnish distraction, make money for computer firms, and yet does not make us anymore interconnected than we were in Columbus' time, nor make us any wiser. And the terminology of this environment has, if you'll pardon the expression, an infantile quality to it: blog, mashup, tagging--a kind of kids version of Orwell's Newspeak. I do not distrust technology, I'm just suspicious of the motives behind the people who create it. "Oh, what brave new world that has such people in it . . . "
who pee'd in the sandbox?
Well, I got into the Learning 2.0 sandbox and added my blog address to the list for Harford County. I'm not sure what else to do, but anyway, it's there.
audio books
I found Netlibrary and Project Gutenberg to be non-user-friendly. I typed 1984 under Title Search and came up with nothing. I also looked up Lovecraft under Author Search and came up with zilch. Overdrive seems like a version of the library's own Maryland Digital Library Consortium--which did bring up 1984 under Title Search. Still no Lovecraft, though. I guess there's not much call for ol' H.P.
online productivity tools
I found this site http://lifedev.net/big-list-of-online-productivity-tools/and glanced at some of the tools. Although they might not be sexy or narcie (my shorthand word for narcissistic--I own the trademark on it), these tools seem, on the whole, much more useful and practical than a lot of the other things I've explored in Web 2.0.
the future of 2.0
I think this 2.0 stuff is all temporary. It will become 3.0, then 4.0, and onward. That is the nature of things. I'm not convinced it improves anything in practical terms, except in some particular ways, such as searching for information in a speedier way. A lot of the rest of it comes off as somewhat narcissistic/Brave New World/ Logan's Run stuff. Except we don't die at 30.
Still no cure for cancer, though.
Still no cure for cancer, though.
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