Text lasts. It’s not platform-dependant, you don’t just get it from one source, read it in one place, understand it in one way. It is not dependent on technology: it is what we make technology out of. Code is text, it is the fundamental nature of technology. We’ve been trying for decades, since the advent of hypertext fiction, of media-rich CD-ROMs, to enhance the experience of literature with multimedia. And it has failed, every time.

James Bridle — The New Value of Text.

[Moore’s Law means] that anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen.

It’s a fantastic speech on pre and post Cold War generations, networks vs hierarchies, and the failure of governments to come to terms to what is happening in society. Highly recommended.

The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

[…]

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

Seth Godin on the future of the library.

You can’t just dip into these channels and understand the interactions that are going on. You need to get involved or you risk sounding like every other lazy pundit that doesn’t ‘get it’ as they state.. “I don’t want to know what you are having for breakfast!”

Those regurgitating this particular meme are probably not that interested in humanity anyway. It’s like walking into a public gathering and shouting “What are you all talking about and how is this relevant to me?!!”

Documentally responds to the recent Guardian article about an apparent backlash against social networking.

This is democracy’s Napster moment, the point at which the forms of governance that have evolved over two hundred years of industrial society prove wanting in the face of the network, just as the business models of the recording industy were swept away by the ease with which the internet could transmit perfect digital copies of compressed music files.

Bill Thompson on the legacy of WikiLeaks.