Looking Back
When I first came into this class I didn’t know what to expect. I’d taken technology-related “fundamentals” classes a number of times throughout my academic career and most had left me sour (“Chapter 1: The Keyboard”….really??”). The reason I’d always left those classes feeling empty is because they tend to start from an assumption that the student is already behind and thus the entire class is spent “catching up” the student. This class did not do that and I feel the reason for that is because it looked at its subject matter through a specific lens — technology as it is in the present moment. Not only is this a more valuable approach for the student it is also a much more interesting one for all involved.
The wisdom of this approach was apparent throughout the course as we discussed topics such as open-source, the idea of “free” services and both utopian and dystopian views of our interconnected future. Week after week stories would pop up on our Twitter feed of new developments in most all the topics we discussed. From Google announcing the open-sourcing of their AI Engine the same day we discussed open sourcing in class to the Google Cardboard VR experiment that hit newsstands the day before we discussed the reemergence of the newspaper as an online force with Jeremy Shermak, not only were the topics timely they also intertwined and created a holistic view of the technologies we use every day.
The take-away for me from all of this was the library cannot exist in a vacuum and that while not all libraries are forward-thinking as Chattanooga or some University libraries, they must all share a general knowledge and understanding of our technological world if they are to survive and remain relevant into the future. Not every library has to offer access to a TOR browser or offer a faster Internet connection than Google Fiber, but they all need to know the overall trends and changes that take place in the world and be ready to adapt to them.
Two of the more popular quotes from Bruce Lee are “Be water, my friend” and “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless and add what is specifically your own.” Taken from Lee’s book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, I feel they apply perfectly to the library in regards to technology. The library must, like water, constantly adapt to the world around it and in order to adapt the library must look at the available technologies and trends and decide on a one-by-one basis which ones serve their specific needs and which ones do not while also applying their own unique touch as well.
I do not know if this was the overall intent of the class, but I felt it important that I express here the value I took from it and how I applied the topics discussed to my own way of looking at and processing the world. And, as it was the first “fundamentals” class that has moved my thinking forward instead of backwards, I thought that merited mention as well.
Thank you.
