I was really interested in the discussion of how paper validates knowledge. With the advent of blogs and online publishing sites, any information can be passed off as legitimate. In contrast, paper sources are often more legitmate. Most publishers are in the business to make money and they know blatant misrepresentation of facts will get them fewer viewers. (Although some businesses get around this by feeding misinformation to an already voracious audience.) Newspapers have fact-checkers.

I also found interesting their point that shared documents can create a sense of community among an otherwise diverse population. They mention documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I never thought about it like that, but it's so true. I would like to point out that legal documents must provide for the well-being of everyone before they can unite everyone. It's the same thing with television shows and music. You can overhear a stranger in the grocery store talking about Desperate Housewives and all of a sudden, you have a new best friend.

Let's all freak out about technology!

In chapter 3, Brown and Duguid talk about the evils of forcefully splitting people apart and forcing them to work alone, namely the Chiat/Day anecdote. They also talked about how all the predictions that everyone will be working from home have proven false.

Chiat/Day's experiment failed and people still work in offices for one very basic and obvious reason: human beings are social animals. We will always form groups, we will always help each other out, and we won't dehumanize ourselves.

With the proliferation of every new technology, from telegraphs to television to Blackberries, people argue that society is dying and that everything is going downhill. It's not. If we can survive the Industrial Revolution, which upended everything, then we can survive the Internet.

Brown also talks about how crappy technology is and how it hampers work. Very true - then. Now the tools are much better and problems happen much less often. (Although I hear horrible things about Dell laptops. My friend has had to have his hard drive replaced four times, each time under warranty.) But tools are better now, and will continue to improve.

Incidentally, I find it hilarious that these guys worked for Xerox for so long because both my parents worked for Xerox, my dad for 25 years and my mom for two years or so. I didn't understand it then, but now I get that they constantly complained about how ill-organized the company is. It's really funny to me to know exactly where these guys are coming from.

I was somewhat relieved when I read Brown and Duguid's arguments about the need for human interaction. Bots will not replace humans because they lack the judgment and social skills that humans use constantly. All the little behaviors we do, like walking on the right side of the sidewalk, we do for a reason, like to not impede the flow of pedestrian traffic. Things we don't even realize we do have a purpose. It would be impossible to catalogue them all. Bots can never learn these interactions, and even if we tried to program bots to follow those patterns, there are too many for a bot to ever really replace a human. They used the example of how if bots ran the stock market, it would go haywire. This applies pretty much to all businesses. The best salespeople, for instance, are the people who can make an audience like them, who can read social cues and respond expertly. Bots can't do that! And they never will be able to.Bots can be a wonderful tool for humans to use, but they can't replace humans.

I was somewhat relieved when I read Brown and Duguid's arguments about the need for human interaction. Bots will not replace humans because they lack the judgment and social skills that humans use constantly. All the little behaviors we do, like walking on the right side of the sidewalk, we do for a reason, like to not impede the flow of pedestrian traffic. Things we don't even realize we do have a purpose. It would be impossible to catalogue them all. Bots can never learn these interactions, and even if we tried to program bots to follow those patterns, there are too many for a bot to ever really replace a human.

They used the example of how if bots ran the stock market, it would go haywire. This applies pretty much to all businesses. The best salespeople, for instance, are the people who can make an audience like them, who can read social cues and respond expertly. Bots can't do that! And they never will be able to.

Bots can be a wonderful tool for humans to use, but they can't replace humans.

I was somewhat relieved when I read Brown and Duguid's arguments about the need for human interaction. Bots will not replace humans because they lack the judgment and social skills that humans use constantly. All the little behaviors we do, like walking on the right side of the sidewalk, we do for a reason, like to not impede the flow of pedestrian traffic. Things we don't even realize we do have a purpose. It would be impossible to catalogue them all. Bots can never learn these interactions, and even if we tried to program bots to follow those patterns, there are too many for a bot to ever really replace a human.

They used the example of how if bots ran the stock market, it would go haywire. This applies pretty much to all businesses. The best salespeople, for instance, are the people who can make an audience like them, who can read social cues and respond expertly. Bots can't do that! And they never will be able to.

Bots can be a wonderful tool for humans to use, but they can't replace humans.

dschonew

Chapter 7 speaks about librarians' important roles in information ecologies and the authors' hopes for librarians in the future. This book was published in 1999, so the authors didn't get a chance to talk about the Google Library Project. http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html

A snippet from the website: "The Library Project's aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers."

This is a perfect opportunity for librarians to use their skills to supplement technology. I think I heard rumors that Google was also trying to put the contents of books online, like a library, but that rumor may have been a misinterpretation of the current library project. But what better way to promote reading and technology than an online card catalog? And who better to do it than the group of people who have centuries of experience?