[Publib] Arguing Technology

[Sharon Foster]

I used to be a software engineer, and we had a saying--no doubt lifted
from a much older profession--which is the corollary to what you have
so eloquently said: "It's a poor workman who blames his tools."

Another corollary is, you use the tool that's most appropriate for the
task at hand. And that's on of the decisions that separates the
professional from the amateur.

Sharon M. Foster, 91.7% Librarian
Speaker-to-Computers
http://home.southernct.edu/~fosters4/





On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:52 AM,  <Backwage at aol.com> wrote:
> 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
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