Monday, April 18, 2011

Myths About the Information Age

Post-Vegas life got a bit crazy and then I had the actual official Big 4-0 and thus the light posting.
Excuses, excuses.

In any case, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "5 Myths About the Information Age," caught my eye. The gist (in case the title does not give it away): We regularly hear all of the following (these sorts of exercises run the risk of creating strawmen, but I think most of us have at least heard variations on all of them.) "The Book is dead." "We have entered the information age." "All information is now available online." "Libraries are obsolete." And "The future is digital." Robert Darnton, a professor and University Librarian at Harvard, dismantles these arguments and in their place presents a more nuanced view of what we should see as the interaction between new technologies and old.

3 comments:

Ken said...

Groan.

Name: Matthew Guenette said...

dcat--

too long since i've posted here. thanks for the props on the book and devil's lake interview. and now, there's a poet i think you should know (if you don't already): jake adam york. his last two books--persons unknown; a murmuration of starlings--are really one big book dedicated to the memory of martyrs from the civil rights movement. i read with jake a few weekends ago, at the little grassy lit. fest at southern illinois university. good stuff, derek. heady. i think you'll like him...

celts win another tight one, and now the sox with 3 in a row...for a day at least, the sports gods are smiling on us...

dcat said...

Matt --
Thanks for this. As you know I'm sadly a bit of a poetry philistine so I'm always glad when someone passes along an enthusiastic recommendation.
The C's are sneaking along in this series, letting experience win out on the end. We'll see what happens when they face all of those troglodytes at MSG. Sox got the win today, meaning yesterday's loss did not start a new bad streak. I suspect that come August, April's struggles will be long forgotten.

dcat