Paging Dr. Jung. Is Dr. Jung in the house?

Posted on by
Reply

This morning I woke up from a dream in which I was crawling between two enormous rocks. The crevice between them was just barely big enough for me to squeeze through.

At the end of the crevice stood a tall tree. Once through the rocks, there was no where for me to go but up. So I climb the impossibly tall tree until I found myself stranded on the highest, most precarious branch with no good way down.

If you listen, your dreams can tell you a lot. Mine are not usually quite so straightforwardly metaphorical.

First World Problems?

Posted on by
1

While I’ve been busy blogging about my frustrations with upgrading to iOS5, Sarah Houghton (Librarian in Black) has been busy telling the world how librarians got screwed by the recent deal between Overdrive and Amazon. Basically, Amazon has agreed to make Overdrive eBooks super simple for registered library patrons. In exchange, library patrons’ reading histories and other personal data will become property of Amazon. Amazon users should already be familiar with this practice as it is a standard aspect of the Amazon EULA (you do read those, right?).

Library patrons will also have the chance to purchase the borrowed books they especially enjoy.

Nothing sinister on the surface, perhaps. I like getting book recommendations from Amazon based on what I bought that others bought.

But LiB is correct in her righteous fuming to chastise us librarians for being so willing to turn a blind eye to the privacy concerns so quickly in order to catch the eContent we need to satisfy demand. We need to have a conversation about this, even if, at the end of the day, we sign on to the deal anyway.

Watch the video and let me know what you think of her arguments. BTW, parts of her rant are NSFW.

More than a few comments suggest that privacy is such a 20th century idea. At least one person calls Sarah’s privacy concerns a “First World problem”. Having to get more memory so I can upgrade to iOS5 is the very definition of a First World Problem. Not wanting to easily surrender the idea that “free people read freely” and privately may be a First World problem of sorts. If so, it is the underpinnings of our First World way of life.

The trouble with iStuff

Posted on by
1

A few days ago, I wrote about my quite quotidian problem with iOS5. “My iOS5 Dilemna” was my most read to date, but I feel little embarrassed by it. I was already feeling embarrassed while I was writing it.

The word dilemna sounds like I can’t figure out how to solve this fairly mundane problem. I am grateful to my several friends who helpfully pointed out that I might resolve this entire situation with a second, bigger external hard drive. This is good, practical advice and I am grateful for their product recommendations.

As usual, my friend Daryl knew what I was writing about even before I did. Daryl pointed out that the trouble with iStuff is the need to sync them to a “real computer”. That’s what it comes down to. I love my iStuff: iPod, iPhone, iPad. I don’t mind playing around with iTunes and shoving files around from device to device.

I just don’t like having to maintain my laptop. Upgrading software, backing things up. There’s the weak link with iStuff. My iPod, iPhone and iPad are only as useful as my ability to keep my “real computer” up-to-date and performing well.

Writing and syncing my iStuff are pretty much the only two things I do with my laptop these days. Still, when my laptop runs up against a performance wall, my iStuff suffers.

That’s annoying.

 

My iOS5 dilemna

Posted on by
1

People are asking me what I think about all the great new features loaded into iOS5. It is sweet of them to ask. By asking, they are implying that they think of me as one of those people who is always at the leading edge of things. I like to be thought of that way. Unfortunately, it isn’t true. Here’s the blog post to burst that bubble.

I haven’t upgraded to iOS5 yet. I tried to but I don’t have enough free memory on my laptop. More precisely, I no longer have enough free memory on my laptop to fully backup my iPad and iPhone, which is, in my mind, a requirement before installing a new operating system.

Not enough memory? How is that possible, you ask? Isn’t memory pretty much free these days. Yes and no. Here’s my situation:

I use an HP Pavilion with a 105 GB hard drive. I have only 2.25GB free. Most of the used space is occupied by music. All of the music on my laptop is currently also backed up on a 60 GB book. The rest of my music is on a 120GB external hard drive which I currently have no way to back up.

In order to free enough space to back up my iPad and iPhone, I will need to offload some or all of my music files onto the external hard drive. Since I have no way to backup that off-loaded data once it is moved, this option makes me very nervous.

Still, I’m planning to move it all over to the external hard drive and free up lots of space on my laptop so I can do backups, update operating systems and resume podcast downloads as well.

First, I’ve got to find time to move the files and then have iTunes map the files out again. Not much for me to actually do while this is happening, but I want to keep an eye on it in case there are problems.

Then the actual updates for iTunes, iPhone and iPad. That’s probably an hour or so of patiently waiting.

Simplest solution: get a new laptop with more memory. I’m eager to move from Vista to Windows 7 anyway. That, however, costs money, which is, by the way, in short supply these days.

So there you have it. The simple, sad but true reason why I haven’t upgraded yet. I expect to upgrade this weekend so I can once again be the kind of person people ask for an opinion on the swank new features hidden in the new OS.

And yes, I am fully aware that there is nothing in this post of sufficient import to set the world on fire. To my social activist friends, yes, I do realize that these are fake, First World problems. I say with all humility, “The First World is where I live.”

 

I got flashed.

Posted on by
Reply

A few weeks ago, I got flashed. It happened on September 22 at 7:21am. I was driving to work, minding my own business, not hurting anyone. I was on the turnpike in front of the high school. It was still dark outside and my mind was turning around the things I needed to do at work that day. NPR was on the radio. I took a sip of coffee, but before I could even swallow it happened.

I got flashed.

A week later I received my traffic ticket in the mail. A $50 fine for traveling 32 in a 20. This was 7:21am in the morning. It was a school zone. The flash was from the silent sentry, the City of Oak Ridge Photo Enforcement Program.

My town has been doing the photo enforcement thing for about two years now. They went up at three major intersections to increase road safety after a middle school girl was run over by a school bus on her way home from school.

It was hard to debate the merits of increased traffic safety. A few libertarian types cried foul and posted yard signs admonishing no one in particular to “Obey the Constitution. Kill the Traffic Cameras.” Every now and then you see a bumper sticker that says something about illegal revenue cameras. A few people raised privacy concerns, though was privacy entitlements exist while driving along the 3 major roads in town weren’t well expressed.

In general, the cameras went up and no one really freaked out too much. I was actually surprised by how little I minded them being there. The cameras have made me a better driver. I am more mindful of my speed when rolling through school zones or across the city center during the middle of the day. There’s nothing wrong, to my mind, with a safety enforcement measure that makes me focus more on being safe than on looking for cops to see how fast I should really be going.

And that’s what’s so mystifying about this recent flashing. I got picked up on camera by the Silent Sentry doing 32 in a 20 MPH during school zone hours. Like most school zones across America, there’s a yellow light that blinks when the 20 MPH limit is in effect. When the light blinks, you drive 20. When the light doesn’t blink, you drive 35.

So, the careful reader will note that I was actually behaving rather well for any other time of day. I was 3 miles per hour under the usual speed limit. And I don’t remember the light flashing. In fact, I actually remember thinking to myself how surprising it was that the light was not flashing at 7:21am on a school morning.

I was being careful. I was being obedient. I was being observant.

And so, when my ticket arrived, I told my wife not to worry. I would simply set a court date and explain that the light was not blinking when I traveled through and, since I was clocked at a speed well under the usual speed limit, it was only right to dismiss my ticket and congratulate me for being a responsible, careful, conscientious driver.

So this evening, I finally decided to review the traffic camera footage online. Just to establish the rightness of my claim. When I watch the video, I see the yellow school zone light was dutifully blinking in the far right of the frame. It blinks 2 or 3 times and then my silver Prius goes whizzing by at a speed much greater than the cars approaching in the other lane.

This is what you call getting busted. This is the mystery of memory. I clearly remember thinking how strange it was that the school zone was not yet in effect as I traveled through. I clearly remember that light not being on and watching my speedometer to be sure I was holding it under the required 35.

I was wrong.

This is why I don’t mind having cameras posted in public areas where obedient drivers can be safer drivers. Because I was traveling too fast at the wrong time of day.

I have friends who argue that these traffic cameras are unconstitutional because they do not allow you to confront your accuser. The erosion of privacy and the automation of law enforcement are certainly things worth worrying about. But I don’t buy the argument that traffic cameras are unconstitutional.

This evening I confronted my accuser. I logged onto a website and watched a 12 second video of myself breaking the law. I confronted my accuser and lost.

I won’t be scheduling that court hearing. I am mailing a check for $50.

Justice prevails.

Something better than bad

Posted on by
Reply

Since 9th grade, I have thought of myself as a writer on the verge of writing Really Big Things. Important Things. Vital Things. Astounding Things.

There has only been one thing really standing in my way: I’m not writing.

It takes a constant infusion of morale boosting to be a writer. Notice I didn’t say a “great writer”. That’s no longer my goal. I have decided to settle for being a writer — someone who writes.

Just the simple act of writing takes an inordinate amount of inspiration to stave off the question, “Who cares?”

Seth Godin’s blog provides that inordinate amount of inspiration. In his post “Talker’s Block“, Seth points out that nobody ever really gets talker’s block. We talk all the time quite freely about stuff we know nothing about and never really worry about sounding dumb or inarticulate or incoherent. We don’t worry about it because we know no one’s really listening and what we say won’t last. Our words wash away moment to moment.

Not so with writing. We carry around the idea that everything set to page is indelible, permanent, an enduring testament to the quality of our inner lives. Such pressure.

How much better to simply get over it, realize that nobody is going to actually read what you are writing and then write anyway. Write in public. Write where people can see it, and don’t worry about being good enough to satisfy. Worry only about being better than bad.

Here’s what he says:

Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly–you don’t need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you’re concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is not a problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.

The second best thing to zero is something better than bad. So if you know you have write tomorrow, your brain will start working on something better than bad. And then you’ll inevitably redefine bad and tomorrow will be better than that. And on and on.

Write like you talk. Often.

Lovely. Thanks, Seth.

Hello Qwikster. Goodbye Qwikster.

Posted on by
Reply

Very glad to see today’s Netflix announcement that the company will not be splitting the DVD-by-mail and streaming services into two separate companies.

First, because I can’t spell Qwikster. It took me four tries just to type the title of this post.

Second, because I don’t want to be exposed as a hypocrite for having blogged about my impending defection and then being forced to admit that I didn’t actually follow through on that defection.

So here’s the big thing I’m wondering: Why the hell do I care about this so much? There are far more important things happening right now that actually affect people’s lives in much more significant ways. Right now, people are protesting government/corporate corruption in cities all over the country. I’m not there marching with them. I’m here, blogging about Netflix and feeling relieved that a small but undeniable crises has been averted.

Have I become one of the people I worry so much about? Am I now actually the person who cares more about my personal entertainment options than civil affairs and participatory governance? Have I already amused myself to death?

Standing in the stream

Posted on by
1

People don’t “surf the web” anymore. Or, if they do, they don’t tell me about it.

I’m glad. I always hated the expression. The web browsing as surfing metaphor never rang true for me. As if clicking from link to link to link was a challenging, exhilarating experience that required skill, focus and a measure of bravery.

I always thought of web browsing more like jungle vine swinging. Reaching frantically from branch to branch, trying to get someplace you can’t really see and hoping all the while you can somehow quit crashing into trees.

But this post isn’t about the metaphor of web browsing. I just want you to know I don’t do much of it. I don’t have the patience required or the tolerance for tedium.

That’s not to say that I don’t spend a great deal of my time online — reading, gleaning, gathering. Take a look at my Google Bookmarks account and you’ll see a digital hoarder at work. A magpie of hypertext.

I just don’t get my web content by running around on the web and trusting my clicks to take me anywhere useful. I prefer that my content come to me.

I read a library blog post several years ago (was it FreeRangeLibrarian?) in which the writer described a future wherein information comes to people rather people going to their information. I understand what she means.

Like I said, I’ve never been big on Googling a topic and then browsing links to see what’s there. For a short while, I tried StumbleUpon as a discovery engine but found the result pretty much the same, random hits about diverse topics without a single common thread for context except that they were “about” a general interest of mine — writing, history, Beatles, Buddhism, technology. This is a maddening mashup of sites that add little value to my life.

So there’s the crux. I need my information to add value to my life in some small way. My information needs to inform or enlighten or, at the least, entertain. If it doesn’t, I’m bored.

So, I don’t often go out in search of news or information. I let news and information come to me. Like a bear standing in a stream catching fish.

Here’s what I mean:

  • Facebook: I use Facebook mostly to read articles or watch videos posted by friends who share common interests. I’m not a great Facebook friend. I often find myself asking Michelle, “Does so and so have kids?” only to find that my good friend so and so posted every pregnant moment for the past 9 months and then delivered triplets. How did I miss that? Friendship fail! I missed it because I was more interested in the articles.
  • Twitter: I follow 84 people and am followed by 36. I’m not prolific. I catch interesting links from time to time. My favorite use is during a conference or other event, monitoring a hashtag to have conversations with many people in a “happening”. That’s fun. Like having a private, telepathic conversation. A layer of conversation at a pitch only I and a few others can hear.
  • Google Reader: I follow 92 blogs. Most are about librarianship, educational technology and eText. RSS is the best (and only) way for me to keep up with my favorite thinkers on a particular topic. I am very rarely caught up. Right now, I have 946 unread stories. I’m not sure there’s a prize for skimming/reading them all but it feels like I should for some reason. This was a real burden until I started using the FeeddlerRSS app for iPad. It has been a great way to read my feeds since each post takes a screen and you can move through posts by swipping.
  • Flipboard: So, I mentioned that I feel bad about not being a better Facebook friend. It isn’t that I don’t care about my people. I just don’t want to spend a lot of time visiting each and every profile to see what’s new. The new FB redesign has helped a little but I still really only see the updates from about 20 friends. That’s where Flipboard comes in. Flipboard takes my FB feed and reassembles it as a magazine of images and captions on pages that can be swiped. Very efficient. I see pictures and posts from people I care about but don’t always think to check up on. I like an update or comment on a post and sudden that person is back in my regular FB stream. I’m a good friend, after all. Nice save, Flip Board!
  • Zite: This is my favorite iPad app of the past 3 months. Zite uses my Google Reader, Delicious and Twitter feeds to assemble a customized magazine of articles predicted to be of interest to me. I can like or dislike a specific article to provide feedback and can indicate specific elements of interest within a story to see more like it. Here’s the thing about Zite: it knows me really well. Nearly all of the articles presented are interesting to me and there is very little duplication of articles discovered through FB, Twitter or my RSS feeds. Automated information concierge. Brilliant!

These 5 sites/apps take up pretty much all of the time I spend online. In other words, I pretty much only ever really go to 5 sites on the Web. For me, they are very sticky and very helpful. They pull together streams of content into a single river. Several times a day, I wade out into the river to see what’s there. Actually, that’s not true. With my iPhone, iPad and Chrome Twitter extension, I am pretty much always standing in the stream.

I don’t mind. It is no effort. I spend a great deal more of my time reading and thinking about stuff than filtering and deciphering.

Not sure if anyone out there is still “surfing”. If you are, I hope you are having fun and don’t mind so much that constant feeling like you are always just about to drown.

What libraries are for.

Posted on by
3

I had a fascinating conversation with a librarian friend today. We were talking about ongoing collection development projects, the role of eBooks and emerging modes of media. Flashpoint: “But really. Don’t you really think that in a few years people will stop needing us since everything is online?”

In his defense, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed and bewildered by the pace of change. In his defense, there is much to feel overwhelmed and bewildered about.

The idea took me a bit by surprise. It was unsettling to hear a librarian speak the words “everything is online”. That was the kind of talk that used to rile me up in library school back in the early 2000’s. The speaker, usually a politician of some type, would get rewarded by a list of the many things that were, in fact, not online — encyclopedias, newspaper archives, scholarly journal articles, video, contemporary books.

Of course, all of that has changed. Which is to say, all of that is online now.

So here’s the point: that doesn’t matter. Librarians need to move beyond the old idea that our job is to provide a stronghold of printed information as authority against the less reputable, fadish online information sources. This was a dumb battle. We didn’t stand a chance. Mostly because there was nothing there to fight against.

The idea that libraries exist as some kind of print island oasis in a choatic ocean of digital resources is wrong-headed.

Everything is pretty much online now and libraries are more important than ever. Why? Because the companies that have made every aspect of our culture available and accessible to us online, want to sell that culture back to us.

I love Apple, Amazon and Google. They have pushed the information ecosystem forward in a big way. I love all three because they make information easy to locate, obtain and use. But they scare me a little, too. They scare me because they think of information in terms of consumption, as something that is consumed.

Apple’s iPod, iPhone and iPad are the 3 major vehicles for how I interact with my friends, my music, and my news. I love the iPad as an eReader. At the moment, I only read free, public domain or creative commons licensed books on the iPad because I don’t want to pay for my books.

Our library is working on implementing free download of EBSCO eBooks to the iPad and Nook with Overdrive access on the Kindle and iPad to follow. Still, I worry that the logistics of moving an eBook from the library collection to a personal eReader will not be as easy as the process of moving a purchased book from the Amazon or iBook stores to the native eReader apps. Will our patrons be willing to endure a little inconvenience to save money or will convenience win out? History places the chips on the side of convenience.

And so, we work diligently to explore, implement and develop eBooks plans and services that are highly convenient. Not because we are competing with Amazon for book customers or with Netflix for video watchers. We do this because we believe people shouldn’t have to pay tolls to access the products of their own culture.

I love to buy books. People should be free to buy books, but people shouldn’t have to buy them.

Apple, Amazon and Google are helping make sure everything is online. That’s their business model. It is a very effective business model.

Libraries are there to ensure that business models aren’t the only factor shaping the tools and terms of our cultural production. That’s what I find so fascinating about the work librarians should be doing.

For a long time, we worried that the Internet would somehow co-opt us, render us irrelevant and sweep us away. Now, librarians are learning to co-opt the tools of the Web to drive cultural production forward and keep the resources needed for good learning available to all.

In which I wax rhapsodic about having the best job in the world

Posted on by
Reply

I have the best job in the world. I’m a librarian.

There’s a lot to love about being a librarian. People think you’re smart. You get to hang out with people who like books. You meet the best students. You help people do things that are either useful or important for them to do. You are always learning and you try to inspire other people to be always learning.

That’s just the getting started list. So, here’s the irony. I have never been so inspired and so enjoyed my work more than  right now when everything the library has been assumed to be stands in question.

Right now, when the printed book starts to seem a little quaint beside eBooks and mobile eReaders.

Right now, when libraries everywhere, including my workplace, are incompletely funded.

Right now, when the presumed purposes and foundations of higher education are called into question and Open Source video lecturers like Salman Kahn are being hailed as the wholesale future of learning.

Right now, when long established models of library service and collection development are falling apart and being reinvented and nothing is entirely comfortable and we never entirely feel like we know what we are doing.

It’s fun.

Here’s why. I am working with groups of people (librarians, faculty and students) who are passionately interested in teaching and learning.

We are building better ways of doing things. We are picking up new tools (cellphone, anyone?) and trying to figure out how to help students reach deeper involvement in their own learning.

We are improvising a bit and sharing what works.

And we are failing together. Failing in new and interesting ways and, hopefully, sharing these failures with each other to get beyond the 10,000 failures that don’t matter toward the one success that does.

Part of this enthusiasm is probably just personality. Maybe I’d be writing this very same blog post if I were a bus driver or a scuba instructor or a mechnical engineer. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully.

One thing I know for sure: I am at my best when everything is in a little bit of flux and nothing is completely certain. Not your traditional job description for an academic librarian.

What’s not to love?