Unit 8: Is it still true today, yep?

I loved reading ‘Life is what happens to you when you'remaking other plans’, written by Michael Schuyler in 2000. It was a blast from the past to know even back in 2000 people who were making decisions on technology knew little to anything about the technology itself. I will admit that understanding technology has become easier and easier, but I was still surprised that my now fiancé, then girlfriend knew little to nothing about computers. She wanted them just work to and to do what she wanted. She had no interested on how they worked, “That’s what the Best Buy people are for (Geek Squad).”

Again this article was written back in 2000, and I would cringe if a big city library system didn’t have some IT professionals in the room when talking about the future technology plan for a city-wide system, but what about smaller systems or  a one library town.  Some libraries can’t even afford to have an IT person on staff and then need to talk about their future in technology needs. I’d love to dismiss this article and say, it’s a great satire of the past, but in fact it’s probably something that still happens today in the building next door, when we’re not paying attention.

Sure there are words everyone knows now, like, internet and website. Small businesses go out of business because of their lack of web presence. Library need to always staff in front of the crowd and therefore need to keep a loud technology presence in the room at all staff meetings.

I am currently working on a LSTA grant for a program I call ‘The Videogame Blogging Station’. Without going into a lot of specifics I want to get a powerful computer with numerous recording abilities for tweens and teens to play games while recording themselves and for them to make games reviews and video blogs. This will help them build communication skills, video editing skills and self-esteem, plus they get to play video games, everyone wins.  In the grant I will need to talk about in many pages my technology needs, but mostly I will need to talk about outcomes. What’s interesting is the outcome has nothing to do with the actual technology needs.

I brought that all up because technology forecasting can easily get clouded by non-technology based information. We want to maintain a high-speed internet. We want to set up places for staff to save all of their work so they can use it anywhere in the city, etc. These things are great, but you’ll need a tech guy in the room to help you figure out how this is going to happen and the cost. Cost especially is important in future casting.

I really loved Schuyler article, partially for its humor, but even more because these issues still exist at some level all over the place today.