A blog entry about technology - "Thing # 9"

Hi all,

Now I'm ready for "Thing #9" of the BCL 23 Things for TLC 2.0. By the way, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, the link to it is http://blogs.library.nova.edu/tlc/?page_id=130. For this "thing" we are being asked to blog about technology.

Most people think of technology as getting on the computer and doing things like blogs and e-mail and digital photography, etc., and those are indeed aspects of technology today as it has grown and evolved over the years. However, being good at using these great electronic tools does not mean that one understands the technology enough to know what to do when something doesn't work right. A term such as "technology consumers" can be used to describe those who are good at using the technology and are up on all the latest software and Internet services, even to a great degree of skill. These days, with the extreme user friendliness of most electronic services and systems as compared to 20 or 30 years ago, it is possible to be very skilled at using those services or systems without having any understanding of the software or hardware that are used to access or enable them. When all functions properly, such understanding is generally not necessary unless one needs to do something unusual. And even then, often it is only necessary to learn a small portion of the background information in order to accomplish the task, such as a little html, for instance. But this is still not all there is to know. A person may know bits and pieces, enough to do what they need to do, but there is so much more to know before any of us can consider ourselves truly technological people. And there is so much knowledge and information that falls under the category "technology" that not any one person can possibly know it all; but people can become experts at various aspects, such as programming, or blogging, or the hardware problems, etc.

I taught myself programming in BASIC in 1979, and have always had an intuition for computer things, since back then when it was not chic to be considered a geek. Starting off in the field of physical science and then being in the field of libraries means that I have seen information go from primarily book based to largely computer based, and I have seen computers change from being applied almost exclusively to science or business tasks to being applied to a variety of tasks including consumer, recretional, and social interests. Not that business and science do not use their fair share of computing power; they must. However, the computer power devoted to other applications has grown tremendously, just as computer power and availability has grown by leaps and bounds. Having nearly a three decade perspective relating to computers enables me to see the value of both print and online resources and how they can complement eachother. A well prepared reference book by an authoritative author is reliable and often one can find information more quickly there than online because the information in it is organized and an experienced librarian knows the sources in his or her area of specialty, how to use those sources, and what can be found in each of them. On the other hand, the Internet is great for finding elusive information or very recent, up-to-date information such as news topics. However, the same concerns on evaluating the quality and reliability of sources that apply to print information also apply to Internet based information. Back 30 years ago people said "Just because it is in print does not mean it's true." Today we can also say "Just because it is on the Internet does not mean it's true." So I guess it can also be said, as the old adage goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Bye for now,

Eileen

"Flickr Color Pickr" is really cool!

Hi all,

One of the 23 things we are working on this week are the third party tools available with Flickr, and they ask us to write about one we like. I like "Flickr Color Pickr". It's really cool how you can just pick a color and see pictures that are predominantly in that color. This is great if one is trying to put together a montage or just have pages of different colors to set a mood.

Bye for now,

Eileen

More on adding images and Flickr

Hi all,

I am working on another blog post as I continue my learning assignment. I have set up a Flickr account and posted a picture of the Broward County Main Library in Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/16910882@N06/. I also added the picture on the side in this blog entry using the blog photo import button. I then went back to Flickr and set up my own Flickr page and so the photo I uploaded to Flickr earlier is now at http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonrocker/1826645547/.

Then, I completed an exercise in which I created a card with the photo and then uploaded it to Flicker (please see next blog entry for details).

Bye for now.

Eileen