Friday, October 28, 2005
Pew Internet & American Life Project Commentary: "Speech at Internet Librarians conference
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
I just got back from the Internet Librarians conference in Monterey, California, where I gave a talk about some of the recent work we have done at the Pew Internet Project and some of the subjects that have preoccupied us as we consider future research.
It was the ninth conference of the group, an interesting and growing mix of academic, corporate, medical, and public librarians. It was my third time there and these librarians never fail to be engaging, inquisitive, smart, and exceptionally friendly. It's just what you'd want librarians to be.
My full speech text can be found here."
Selected quotes from his speech:
"Somewhat surprisingly, when we asked people to tell us the specific reason why their use of the internet was helpful there was a close-to three-way tie:
· 34% said the internet put them in touch with other people who provided support and advice.
· 30% said it provided information that allowed them efficiently to compare options.
· 28% said it helped them find professional or expert services.
In other words, the internet was most of all a tool of social networking, rather than simple information retrieval."
"Those are several of the subjects we have tackled in recent months and I’d like to wrap up my comments by talking about four internet trends and several ideas that we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate into our work.
Trend 1: is that more and more people AND things will be connected to the internet...
Trend 2: Not only will more things become attached to the internet, but the user’s internet will become more wireless and mobile...
Trend 3: Content creation and content sharing will increase.
More than two years ago, we found that 44% of internet users and 57% of those with broadband at home had created and shared content on the internet – their postings on web sites, their music files, media creations, pictures, pieces of creative writing. We are going to repeat that survey this fall and I’m sure we will find that the numbers have shot up because so many more people have broadband connections and because there are so many more ways now for people to manipulate and share digital content Yahoo! alone generates 5 terabits of data per day now.
Trend 4: Search power will improve and become more socially oriented.
The technology is getting better and the social systems we are building for data tagging and organizing are getting more powerful by the day. The rise of Flickr,
Deli.cio.us, and other tagging systems like MyYahoo! are a harbinger of how sociallyconstructed taxonomies of digital material will begin to coexist with the traditional forms of sorting information that have served us well for generations – think Dewey Decimal
System.
The growing use of reputation systems online, of wikis, and of Google-map hacks
are also signs that filtering, sorting, and labeling data is moving into the social realm..."
"A third idea has been promulgated by Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive who has begun to argue that modern life is characterized by what she calls
“CONTINUOUS PARTIAL ATTENTION.” She describes it this way: “Continuous partial attention is not the same as multitasking; that's about trying to accomplish several things at once. With continuous partial attention, we're scanning incoming alerts for the one best thing to seize upon: ‘How can I tune in in a way that helps me sync up with the most interesting or important opportunity?’..."
"Internet librarians – and librarians in general -- strike me as institutional actors who are well-placed to help our culture find a balance work and leisure of the kind Pieper was describing. The very model of libraries embraces these two worlds and encourages balance between them. On the one side, you focus on managing your collections and making them available to users. One the other side, most of the libraries I know have reading rooms, which provide an environment conducive to thought and reflection.
So, maybe you can help us all figure the right mix between
· being connected and being contemplative;
· doing research (or being open to inputs through continuous partial attention) and pausing to reflect, absorb and muse on the things we have encountered in that research
· being on top of the most important information and being aware of the restorative power of “turning things off” when that flow of information becomes debilitating.
I think librarians are among the few institutional actors who might help the culture move away from this kind of environment to what Professor Levy calls an “information habitat” where there is more time for rest, for reflection, and contemplation...”
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
I just got back from the Internet Librarians conference in Monterey, California, where I gave a talk about some of the recent work we have done at the Pew Internet Project and some of the subjects that have preoccupied us as we consider future research.
It was the ninth conference of the group, an interesting and growing mix of academic, corporate, medical, and public librarians. It was my third time there and these librarians never fail to be engaging, inquisitive, smart, and exceptionally friendly. It's just what you'd want librarians to be.
My full speech text can be found here."
Selected quotes from his speech:
"Somewhat surprisingly, when we asked people to tell us the specific reason why their use of the internet was helpful there was a close-to three-way tie:
· 34% said the internet put them in touch with other people who provided support and advice.
· 30% said it provided information that allowed them efficiently to compare options.
· 28% said it helped them find professional or expert services.
In other words, the internet was most of all a tool of social networking, rather than simple information retrieval."
"Those are several of the subjects we have tackled in recent months and I’d like to wrap up my comments by talking about four internet trends and several ideas that we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate into our work.
Trend 1: is that more and more people AND things will be connected to the internet...
Trend 2: Not only will more things become attached to the internet, but the user’s internet will become more wireless and mobile...
Trend 3: Content creation and content sharing will increase.
More than two years ago, we found that 44% of internet users and 57% of those with broadband at home had created and shared content on the internet – their postings on web sites, their music files, media creations, pictures, pieces of creative writing. We are going to repeat that survey this fall and I’m sure we will find that the numbers have shot up because so many more people have broadband connections and because there are so many more ways now for people to manipulate and share digital content Yahoo! alone generates 5 terabits of data per day now.
Trend 4: Search power will improve and become more socially oriented.
The technology is getting better and the social systems we are building for data tagging and organizing are getting more powerful by the day. The rise of Flickr,
Deli.cio.us, and other tagging systems like MyYahoo! are a harbinger of how sociallyconstructed taxonomies of digital material will begin to coexist with the traditional forms of sorting information that have served us well for generations – think Dewey Decimal
System.
The growing use of reputation systems online, of wikis, and of Google-map hacks
are also signs that filtering, sorting, and labeling data is moving into the social realm..."
"A third idea has been promulgated by Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive who has begun to argue that modern life is characterized by what she calls
“CONTINUOUS PARTIAL ATTENTION.” She describes it this way: “Continuous partial attention is not the same as multitasking; that's about trying to accomplish several things at once. With continuous partial attention, we're scanning incoming alerts for the one best thing to seize upon: ‘How can I tune in in a way that helps me sync up with the most interesting or important opportunity?’..."
"Internet librarians – and librarians in general -- strike me as institutional actors who are well-placed to help our culture find a balance work and leisure of the kind Pieper was describing. The very model of libraries embraces these two worlds and encourages balance between them. On the one side, you focus on managing your collections and making them available to users. One the other side, most of the libraries I know have reading rooms, which provide an environment conducive to thought and reflection.
So, maybe you can help us all figure the right mix between
· being connected and being contemplative;
· doing research (or being open to inputs through continuous partial attention) and pausing to reflect, absorb and muse on the things we have encountered in that research
· being on top of the most important information and being aware of the restorative power of “turning things off” when that flow of information becomes debilitating.
I think librarians are among the few institutional actors who might help the culture move away from this kind of environment to what Professor Levy calls an “information habitat” where there is more time for rest, for reflection, and contemplation...”
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