| The Viability of Information Institution - my commentary |
[Oct. 19th, 2008|03:59 pm] |
My good friend Jon Whipple posted a thought provoking article on his blog jettison canopy, titled The Viability of Information Institution. This is my follow on commentary. I thought I'd share.
An excellent exposition of the issues. I want to suggest that the duality that Ross names - public demands for modernised products and the legacy mandates of brick and mortar resource location management - may in fact describe a "code fork" in library culture.
To draw on a similar media-shift the music industry has had to learn (and is still trying to learn) how to survive the separation of the value from the delivery medium. As music has become abstracted and digital the old supply chain economics have lost their relavance. Vynyl has become CD and DVD for those who still cling to the notion of thingness. But the mainstream of development and growth in the music industrial complex is the download store and with direct-to-market fringe being the highest-value "green" sector: fewer middle-margins resulting in higher profitibility.
The music business has forked into three tiers for largely distinct sets of consumers. Just to be clear, the comparison I am making is between physicaly located object commodities and decentralised abstracted ones, not between books and CDs. The parallel of "direct-to-market" efforts are all over the 'Net: from personal blogs to Wikipedia and Google.
The distinction is that these are free and inexpert stores or the stuff. The value of music is opinion based: the buyer knows what they like. The value of the library commodity is often found in authority and veracity, differently subjective measures usually found in the domain of the librarian's expertise. Which seques nicely ...
"Libraries are inherently practitioner-centric" Ross states. I concur. The sticking point is as Jon rightly points out that the publici needs to be marketed this idea. The market economy model breaks down when we lok directly at the value of libraries: they are service institutions, not commodity stores.
Libraries are about connecting the innocently ignorant or naiive with the most appropriate range of solutions to their needs. The current social mandate for libraries and librarianship is that they serve as service centres - a sponsored consulting service - a locus for encountering expertise, not for choosing from what is available on the produce counter today. There is nothing in that mandate which dictates bricks and mortar. The implicit archival repository function of libraries is separable from the informational flow which is the commodity form of the emerging age. In the past the quality and appropriateness of a collection was based on the breadth of the librarians' experience and the size of the physical facility. No longer.
To change metaphors slightly, the emerging library may serve more as a taxi stand, with the experts getting you safely and efficiently through the maze of navigation to your desired locale in the miasma of the information flow. Or perhaps they are limo drivers, or shuttle pilots.
Or marketing experts. Here. This is the Right Way In. I can Guide You Safely. The Good Stuff is Over Here.
The Mac/PC commercials come to mind. There is Public Information all jumbled and confused and unwashed. Here is the neatly buttoned, pedigreed quality asssured authoritative source. You choose. If you liked this, ask us for something else. We really good at this.
The trick to all of this is identifying how to grab that crucial public mindshare, before we lose the support for public sponsored, non-commercialised access entirely. Time is of the essence. |
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| This keeps popping up |
[Oct. 18th, 2008|12:28 pm] |
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
~ Eric Blair
*deepcalmingbreath* |
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| Vatican Lies! News at 11!! |
[Oct. 16th, 2008|04:29 pm] |
Here's an interesting passage I just lifted from the BBC News by David Willey, BBC News, Rome:
I was covering the event for the BBC from Portugal at the time of the attack, and reported immediately from Lisbon the rumours that there had been another attempt on the Pope's life.
It came exactly a year after a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, had shot and wounded the pope in Saint Peter's Square in Rome.
Attack denied
But that same evening, the Vatican formally denied there had been another assassination attempt.
The following day, Portuguese television broadcast footage of the attack.
It was carried out by a mentally unbalanced Spanish priest who was arrested after being jumped on by the Pope's bodyguard, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.
Archbishop Marcinkus laughed this off when I asked him what had happened.
"You can't always believe what you see on television," he told me.
So my question is: ... ah, never mind. It must be pretty obvious. |
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| Damn that bell curve |
[Oct. 14th, 2008|05:28 pm] |
I wish to god I had never taken high school mathematics. Or any social sciences. Reductionism totally sucks. Take the immediately unfolding 2008 Canadian national election - in it's final hours as I write - from the point of view of the western provinces.
I live in Vancouver, BC, Pacific Rim, Edge of the Frontier, End-of-the-West, pothole on the shoreline. This province was incorporated less than 140 years go. That's only two life times. Hardly Old World. And our population levels reflect this historical location. Less than ten percent of the national population lives west of the geographic (as opposed to the sociopolitical) centre. Imagine if you will 5.5 million souls whose fates are determined in the oldest part of the country, before the polls even close in our region.
The effort is made: the press is enjoined not to publish eastern results before the west has had their ritual say. People troupe valiantly to the schools, registration cards in hand. We make our Xs. And none of it really matters.
First, we are too few. Sad, but true and only time can alter this. Someday we will weigh in closer to the same numbers. But that time is many decades perhaps even centuries away.
Secondly, our culture - for all our regional prides and prejudices - is fundamentally the same. We are still living daily under the same Rule of Law. We watch the same television pap. We wear the same Mall-Wart clothing. Even our alternativism is the same.
Statistically, we are not distinct enough to force a tiny rent in the fabric of the spandex curve that wraps our very middle-of-the-road paunch. And in BC - being the largest of the youngest - we pride our selves on our progressiveness, our unfettered adoption of the new and shiny and suchnot. But when you look at the curves, we have pretty much the same love handles as the rest of the country +/- 5% 19 times out of 20.
Agree or disagree, our fate is not our own. It is the pollsters who know who really runs the place. And guess what? They aren't telling us the truth. It isn't the marketing firms, or the political activists. It's the pollsters. By the time they have digested (for us, not against us) the trends of the day, the wording very subtly reinforces the message that the questioners wanted to (dis)prove.
Have you listened - really listened - to the questions asked? I made a point about three years ago to answer every poll that phoned the house. I wish now I had journalled about those as they came in (meme!). I actively listened and tried to read into the process what was being sought out and by whom. And of course, I tried to answer honestly, as a naiive user should. But then, the pollsters know I would do that, don't they? So am I a 5% ? Or the 1 in 20?
That's the true evil of the curve. It knows you know it's there, and that it is accommodating your awareness of it. And so on ... (insert hall of mirrors photo). There is no escape. Our fate is not perhaps determined, but it can be prognosticated to an alarming degree.
Thank god for the antipsychotic meds and the happy pills. If we didn't voluntarily dumb ourselves down we'd probably tear the walls down. And burn the pollsters along with the politicians, puppets or not.
It has taken me nearly through the entire hour I had to kill to write this. Time to find out what the East has decided for me. |
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| 6 Pack of tissues, every Fall |
[Oct. 14th, 2008|03:13 pm] |
Every autumn, along with the arrival of the first head cold of the chilly season I have to go out and buy a six pack of boxes of tissue. Like clockwork. I hate that.
It disturbs me to think that some marketing exec or more likely some marketing serf has precisely calculated the median consumption of disposable snotwipes and bundled that unit perfectly. It irks me to believe that there is a science of measurement that can reliably predict the amount of mucus and eye-gunk I have to wrangle in a given year. Worse yet, perhaps I am adapting my biology to meet the convenient provisioning unit. Ugh.
I really don't want to be on the bell curve. It is undignified to be a point somewhere along that predictable pedestrian slug-backed slope. I crave abhoration - it is the accepted earmark of uniqueness after all. Who wants to be so determined, so exactly quantified that a factory can pump out one year's supply of drip catchers. Not I! *sniffle* |
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| Controversial Meme |
[Oct. 12th, 2008|03:31 pm] |
choas_by_design posted this challenge: so here's my take on it.
Pick it up. Pass it on.
1. What should be done with people who vote Republican?
They should be made to live below the poverty line for two years in the urban wasteland any city above two million souls. See how they like being lost.
2. Do you think wolves should be shot from airplanes?
What are you shooting them at? And are they live when launched?
3. Sarah Palin: evil killer robot or bimbo?
Narrow minded power grubbing cunt. Should be shot from a plane.
4. Name three people who should have been aborted.
W., Cheney, Thatcher.
5. Tell me, who does your god hate?
We are all part of the great oneness which is described as god. Some constituents of the us-ness hates anything you can name. We are so pathetically subjective in our judgments.
6. If your laptop attained self awareness, how would you react?
I'd want to play games with it. Get it to reinvent Empire without Sid Meier's crappy graphics engine on it.
7. What sort of punishment do you think is appropriate for those who repeatedly commit the crime of apostrophe abuse?
They should have their right pinky finger chopped off by slamming a roll-top desk door down upon it repeatedly.
8. If given the opportunity, would you ever eat human flesh?
I do. The bloody stumps of my fingers are testament. Other peoples? I'd have to get to know you first.
9. Which would you prefer: the ability of teleportation or the ability to shoot laser beams from your eyes?
Teleportation. As long as it was Green Powered. Then I could get away from the laser-eyed people on the diseased busses of the inner city.
10. "I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Are you disturbed, or envious?
My insides fill with tears of sympathy.
11. Would it not make more sense to shoot small yapping dogs who nip ankles from airplanes?
Why? You can simply step on them instead. Waste of fuel to take them up.
12. Two women are both running for the same public office. Be honest, which influences your vote more: their policies or their breast size?
I'm an ass man. The bigger more shapely policy-ass gets the ... vote, yeh. The vote. *Ahem.*
13. Which author is writing your life story?
There is the smart ass philosopher in the back seat, coining all the pretty prose, but he is just along for the ride. The really gnarly ape up front is making all the choices. And not very cleverly either. Stupid monkey.
14. Would you watch librarian porn?
Can I join in?
15. Do you think anything should be banned, and if so, what?
Tobacco. Napalm the tobacco fields right now. And probably working more than a twenty five minute walk from home. That should be illegal too.
Everyone: take this meme and pass it around! |
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| Throwing Stones, prologue |
[Oct. 12th, 2008|03:05 pm] |
Talking with my daughter a couple of weeks ago - such a rare thing it stays in memory long after. She is so beautiful, brilliant auburn hair, porcelain skin beneath a carpet of summer freckles, and a deep soulful glow about her. She is a wide open soul, drinking the joys and the upsets of the world around her so deeply. When she has too much of sorrow she shatters. When she is on fire the room lights up as if she holds a torch above her and calls us to burn the castles of the rich. Her presence fills me with such dread and hope and awe.
This one has so much promise. Don't we all? Didn't we? She moves me to push on, to get engaged again. To hope.
What was I doing before my life went off the rails? Surely I had some of that fire, that ambition. That love and hope for the world. I remember the frustration of limits, the seemingly senseless proscriptions. The outrage that kept me going.
My father aspired to be a writer and I hoped to be like him. He worked in news and travel journals when he could. He died with at least one unpublished novel in a box. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Yes, I do have a plan for how this will unfold. It came to me while I was in the privileged company of my inspiring darling daughter.
The topic came around to writing - she is an actor and we have discuss playwriting - and I confessed the need to get my autobiographical first novel out of the way. You know the one. It starts with a childhood memory of mother skirts and the milkman at the door. The one you are supposed to burn. The cleansing requiem.
As I described mine, it came out that I would begin in a sitting room, in present day, facing my family, an encounter group. The question was already asked when we join the scene, hanging in the air like the shallow breathing of the fearful. Unwilling to step through the door of admission and see the world changed forevermore. The moment after you have leapt from the plane all you can think of is "Now, how do I get back in there?"
"I'm putting this out there because you have all been in here - " I tap my temple "For nearly fifty years I've had these conversations with your avatars, daily, weekly. I hardly see you even now when we sit face to face like this. It's these haunting caricatures of you I relate to instead. These stories aren't about you nearly so much as they are about how I perceive you. And how I reconstruct you into my own narrative."
Martha leans forward sharply: "But you used us! This is my life, the details of my private life, exposed. That is a violation of my privacy! You have no right!"
There are a couple of nods, I find myself nodding too. "There is nothing about you here that hasn't been told by others to a dozen strangers at dinner parties or what not. These are about events in the world. No one owns those. It is history. And then I have added a narrative of my own to that. Nothing more. These are - you are - a passing fiction."
Inevitably Jon grunts and shakes his head. "Martha is right. You have trespassed. Telling a few people about an event you were part of is natural and everyone does it, blending fact with a little creative variation. But this book is more than that. Much more. You hold us up to some very unpleasant light. And frankly a lot of it is - ". "Bullshit!" barks Leif.
" - complete fabrication" finishes Jon.
"Exactly" I agree. "Fabrication, fiction, bullshit. It is a creation that describes the arc of my experiences. And you are my family. You were a big part of that. And I have a need to leave a record of my experience."
"But why?!" Meg demands, her eyes wide and wounded, tears so close. "Why tell such unflattering stories about us? What have we done to deserve that?"
"Because I need to be able to leave this all behind. I need to lay this burden down. And as I have said several times before, this ain't about you."
-- 20 -- |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|06:37 pm] |
My god I hate javascript wysiwyg. They are all crap. Just let me code, dammit. Stop being so effing helpful. I'm no average idiot. |
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roaringsky's journal
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