Digital versus Analog

I watched the last episode of Electric Dreams recently and was taken aback by how radically and swiftly technology has changed the way we live and work.

Much of my work over the past decade has been involved to some extent in using the web to either find information or to communicate and consequently I have spent a large part of it behind a computer. I used to work in a library but now work in an office and it looks pretty similar to the one in the TV show The Office, which I am reliably informed by Wikipedia first aired on 9 July 2001. I don't know when that became what work looks like, it just seems to have crept up on us.

I had a useful couple of years in full time education as a mature student, before which I was a library assistant and after which I became a Librarian. I seem to recall computers were around before I went to University but you usually had to do a bit of searching to find one and quite possibly need to ask someones permission to use it once you found it. Then in 2000 as a newly qulfied librarian I was plunked in front of a computer and I have had my view of the world of work obscured by a variety of monitors ever since.

I sometimes have a bit of ambivalent attitude towards all the technology. I love gadgets, but find the disposable culture of constant upgrades distressing. I love the fact that I can collaborate and converse electronically with people across the world. I hate the fact that in reality I find myself collaborating and conversing electronically with people I am sat right next too.