Brains working towards machine consciousness

I am intrigued. Starting a blog post with that seems to be becoming a bit of a habit, but it is true (I guess I feel motivated to post most when intrigued perplexed or baffled).

Over at Sarah Gentleman's RIN blog she describes Lynn Silipigni Conway's work and says that it is a worrying trend for education that web-savvy screenagers want results quickly through web searches and have little time for libraries. Whilst the age of the book is not dead, and books have some very fine qualities, I would have to say that what seems to be a worrying trend for some people is a marvellous vibrant challenge, an excellent opportunity and a gateway out from the hellish world of inadequately financed library book collections for others. Y'know, just saying.

What is worrying, is that she describes it as being more encouraging that the Millenials have a desire, or need possibly, to take up 1:1 librarian time to find the information they need in the library (or from friends, parents etc). That isn't sustainable in an expanding HE sector, and doesn't encourage self reliance on the part of the student either.

I would hate to see libraries disappear - as Mr Giles said in the Buffy series, books smell; there is something about them that evokes memories. The physical presence and nature of a book can help with recall, and sometimes a book is just much more convenient than an electronic gadget. But the internet has the benefit of being rapidly updated, and with web2.0 the user generated content allows you to gain a measure of how much trust to put in a resource in a way which is actually quite hard with a published tome. Some people complain of the web2.0 phenomenon as supporting the 'cult of the amateur', but when you look closely at the material produced through the auspices of the cult of the expert you realise just how much of an advantage multiple eyes can be.