[Publib] Arguing Technology

[Backwage at aol.com]

The other day I was minding my own business, riding the train to work  whilst 
reading the paper when I overheard a conversation between two fellow  
passengers.  They were both young folks, which by my lights means less than  35; the 
topic was computers.  At the time, both of them were fiddling with  their 
devices, though the machines seemed to have no connection to the topic at  
hand--this is just something that kids do, like jiggle their legs and roll their  
eyes when adults speak.
 
I will spare you the particulars of the exchange except to mention that it  
concerned the relative merits of one operating system versus another--Mac and  
PC.  As usual in these confabs, it was war to the knife from the  start.  The 
two of them went at it from Allen Street to Union Station,  a distance of 
several lifetimes if one is trapped close by and cannot find a  distant seat.  It 
was like watching a married couple squabble in a  restaurant.
 
You see a lot of this in the library world.  Mostly, I think, because  the 
protagonists prefer such blather over more substantial topics.   Besides, the 
entire row marks the participants as being among the elevated class  which 
comprehends the guts of such discussions.  At least it makes them  important among 
themselves.  
 
I am old enough to remember when the tech-savvy kids would get together to  
argue the qualities of various vacuum tubes.  The same type of kids play  with 
computers today.  
 
This is also something that you see in any industry where particular tools  
are used to achieve certain results.  The computer folk wouldn't want  to think 
of themselves as mechanics, but they are.  Their discussions  are simply 
arguments over tools--the adjustable crescent wrench over the  box-end.  Where 
auto fixers congregate, there are fierce  rivalries over life-and-death decisions 
such as:  Proto  or Snap-On?  And, exactly when did Craftsman start going 
down  the tubes?   I have seen men ready to kill over the use of a  particular 
impact wrench to remove lug nuts.  
 
These arguments tend to spread out as the actual technical merits of either  
choice are exhausted as topics.  Then you get into the personalities of the  
particular inventors--the other side's founding father being of course either a 
 dyed-in-wool fascist or a sellout to commercial interests.  There are  
people in the library world who know more, and think better, of Steve Jobs than  
they do of any person who has ever held the title of librarian.  Some of  them 
think he should run the country; others fear he does.
 
By now you may have gained the impression that these people bore me.   While 
true, the point of this is that they and their arguments over which  
electronic wrench to use are not particularly useful.  In point of  fact, they are 
without substantial benefit to the user base.  As,  in actual fact, are quite a 
few of the current (and seeming eternal) discussions  over systems, hardware, 
processing, and the like.  It is not that the  library doesn't rest on a solid 
core of information processing--it is that the  library doesn't begin or end in 
the back room.  Even now, when the catalog  is an OPAC and every system is 
run by or through a computer, the library isn't a  computer.  It isn't the 
Internet.  And it certainly isn't anything  offered by a software or hardware 
vendor.  
 
An old friend of mine has been writing books and magazine articles for  
decades on a manual typewriter.  He is a writer, obviously.   Which means he writes 
better than you, most likely.  You will probably not  write better than he on 
any computer, regardless of operating system.  If  the entire computer world 
collapsed, he would still be a writer.  In fact,  if his manual Underwood was 
lost, he would still be a writer--and even if he ran  out of pencils.  It 
behooves us to ask ourselves how many of us would still  be librarians if the 
electricity went out, and the computer screens went  blank.  
 
M. McGrorty
**************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy 
steps! 
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De
cemailfooterNO62)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20090123/f233639f/attachment.htm