Yellin' about technology, or, maybe I picked the right profession after all

I've been thinking a lot lately about technology, information, and learning. Because that's what I do. When I decided a number of years ago to pursue a career in academic librarianship, I signed myself up to muse about how people find information and learn from the published record.

There has been a backlash recently against digital culture and the Web, in such books as "The Dumbest Generation," which I read recently and made reference to here . Only I'm not sure if it really is a backlash against the Web itself. Check out this clear-eyed assessment from Wired magazine to see what I mean.

To make a corny metaphor, libraries have always been a beacon of enlightenment in a sea of ignorance. The Web is a larger, more ubiquitous version of the same kind of beacon - but there's an undeniable down side. The Web is itself largely a sea of trash. Still, it's only a tool created by humans. We can use tools to serve many purposes, but a fascination with tools (which leads to a belief in salvation by technology) can only get you so far. It's always been about what you do with the tools at your disposal.

It is a little worrisome that many people automatically assume the Information Age will be an across-the-board improvement from whatever age preceded it (the Industrial Age? the Age of Killing Each Other In Big Wars?). There is never a shortage of problems to solve, and no one technology can solve all problems. I think that the techno-critics are largely responding to this attitude, whether it's a prevalent one or not. And, it seems, the defenders of technology (like David Wolman, author of the Wired article) are still able to find good justifications for digital culture. What worries me, and most people in my profession, is that instead of being a cumulative thing, as human advances have been all along, the rise of the Web will be used by some as an excuse to discard all old information technologies, regardless of whether or not they can still serve some purpose. If you believe, as I do, that it's the sum total of human knowledge that matters, there will always be a place for non-digital information alongside the burgeoning world of digital information built upon it. There will always be a need to learn about what didn't work, as well as what does work and what might work to solve those ever-present human problems.