Tuesday, December 10, 2002

In Other Words, The "Heavenly Jukebox". Sterling's decade-ahead-of-its-time librarian talk "Bruce Sterling's 1992 speech to the Library Information Technology Association is eerily prescient -- the "Information Economy" is bankrupt, and it's taking the public domain down with it. 'Ladies and gentlemen, there's a problem with showing Mr Franklin the door. The problem is that Mr Franklin was right in 1731 and Mr Franklin is still right! Information is not something you can successfully peddle like Coca-Cola. If it were a genuine commodity, then information would cost nothing when you had a glut of it. God knows we've got enough data! We're drowning in data. Nevertheless we're only gonna make more. Money just does not map the world of information at all well. How much is the Bible worth? You can get a Bible in any hotel room. They're worthless as commodities, but not valueless to humankind. Money and value are not identical. What's information really about? It seems to me there's something direly wrong with the 'Information Economy.' It's not about data, it's about attention. In a few years you may be able to carry the Library of Congress around in your hip pocket. So? You're never gonna read the Library of Congress. You'll die long before you access one tenth of one percent of it. What's important --- increasingly important --- is the process by which you figure out what to look at. This is the beginning of the real and true economics of information. Not who owns the books, who prints the books, who has the holdings. The crux here is access, not holdings. And not even access itself, but the signposts that tell you what to access --- what to pay attention to. In the Information Economy everything is plentiful --- except attention.' " [Boing Boing Blog] [The Shifted Librarian] 8:09:47 AM    comment []

The Art of Blogging-Part 2. As promised George Siemens posted part 2 of the Art of Blogging. It is basic but offers some simple advice: The best way to learn to blog is to blog. It goes on to list examples and resources. As John Robb once put it: Pick a topic. Own it. Blog it. I couldn't find the exact link but it was something like that. (Sorry John.) [Craig Burton: logs, links, life, and lexicon] 7:18:59 AM    comment []

Health-Care Provider Aims To Add Telecommuters, Cut Costs. "BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina plans to upgrade network to let more customer-service reps work from home."Sounds like a great idea to me!... [Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes] 7:15:14 AM    comment []

No more ink stained hands. Now will they make a screen that is readable to wade through the Sunday paper, and will it be as heavy as the Sunday N.Y. Times? eNewspaper Format Proposal. Tablet PCs and e-Newspapers: The Next Step in the Digital Transformation of the Newspaper Business (PDF) "KENT Format: Sponsors: Adobe Systems and Los Angeles Times... Designed to take full advantage of pen-based tablet PCs... Graphically rich, magazine-size pages. No scrolling Can be read offline or online Business model more like the printed newspaper than the Web... Can include video and audio elements... Ads juxtaposed with editorial content... Ads can have additional layers of information... Ads cannot be 'zapped'... Ads can include interactive forms" [via The Buzz Machine] So is this PDF on steroids with audio and video embedded? As long as this format can handle constant updates in an always-on, wireless-everywhere world, I can see why newspapers would be interested in this format. However, I don't see why consumers would want to be locked into PDFs when HTML or RSS is open and works pretty well on a tablet PC. Something to keep an eye on.... [The Shifted Librarian] 7:09:44 AM    comment []

Now My Hair Won't Fall Out..... Internet Soapbox (requires Flash) "Want a memorable way to dispel all those Internet Rumors?" (via my Mother)..." [LibraryPlanet.com] [The Shifted Librarian] 7:07:16 AM    comment []