"stained window"- Banksy
One of my favorite things to learn about is acquisition of knowledge, information processing (within humans) and the inherent drive to create, represent, and transmit knowledge. It's fascinating. Since the earliest times, man has been driven to create, replicate, and understand the surrounding world. As an art major we studied the cave paintings and earliest figures carved from stone. In music theory or history courses we learn about Gregorian chants and early musical instruments. Even in the English language you can trace back the development of language, the changes in phrasing and syntax, and even the changes in how to write in script (cursive). Where we once created drawings on cave walls, we are now surrounded by a world of moving pictures and interactive technologies. Yet, just as our very ancient ancestors, we need to keep and transmit information constantly.
For this reason, publication and librarianship should always be an area of growth and development far into the future. We are hoarders. We like to keep and record everything- even the things we don't need or necessarily want to keep, usually find ways of sticking around (example: all those pictures on your mobile that were uploaded to FaceBook or sent via text message to someone you know. Do you need them? Probably not, but I'd wager you still have copies.) With computers it is easy to accumulate the "crap" Weinberger refers to in his keynote address. We have become experts of creating metadata, but not of managing it- simply because it is so easy to access that it becomes uncontrollable.
As Weinberger also noted in his keynote address, we are very lazy information hoarders. As information becomes more readily available we are beginning to lose some of the foundational skills of communication. Spelling and grammar become less important to learn as we descending into text message shorthand and attain more interactive editing software, facts become less important to memorize because Google is only a mobile device away at all times, and even simple math skills become unnecessary to rehearse in rote because calculators can be found in just about every form of electronic devices. Are these bad for us as a culture? Does it mean we are becoming less intelligent over time out of pure laziness? Or, as Sherlock Holmes might argue (see below): are our brains our most refined machines in which we should only be expected to retain the most vital pieces of data?
Excerpt from "A Study in Scarlet," by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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