Conversation

I think a lot of technology of the last ten years has been Anti-Librarian Technology. Not necessarily on purpose, but I think there's an economic feedback loop that happens.

When we build systems around files and folders, an external agent can help build organizational structure. The core competency of a librarian is that: how to organize and retrieve information.

Ever since the search engine, tech companies have been gunning for the librarian job. But they can only do it with totalizing influence over the problem. They have to own the data. They have to provide the informational structure. And they do this at great cost to longevity of information, and the ability to comprehensively organize.

This is done in service of users who don't have staff librarians, or who don't want to do their own maintenance of their information structure. That's most people, really, but it's a shame, because what we've been left with now is that the dominant technological tools we have for information are controlling, and unorganizable. How many organizations are there where there's a bunch of google docs, most of them made with organization accounts, but sometimes shared from people's personal accounts. Which we find by searching our email for links, not consulting organized directories?

How many do we search for? how many do we end up with conflicting copies of half-baked versions? How many times do we confuse last year's edition for this, because they're both named “Board presentation”? How often do both get edited, and both end up with a date of “last week”?

And the feedback loop that drives this is the UX and user retention loop, since most users don't have organizational drivers, companies who build any system at all, even if it's bad, win out over those who don't. But what's lost in the totalizing effect of that is the ability to organize systemically for those who can, or wish to learn.