Slate Has Posted a slide-show essay about the architecture of libraries.
an Extinction Timeline, predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He’s probably right as far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in its mutating role as urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information, the public library seems far from spent. This has less to do with the digital world—or the digital word—than with the age-old need for human contact.
ahem!?
And when will I have my jet packs, flying cars and moon bases? I was promised all these things by the World’s Fair of East Berlin in 1985.
What a stupid timeline
Yes, Blake, we know you’re a Cassandra on the topic of public libraries…but that timeline is, in general, a crock. “Sit-down breakfasts”? “Letter-writing”? “Peace & quiet”? (For that matter, has smallpox been wholly eradicated?) It’s not even worth fisking, but I’m sure it makes one heck of a PPT slide.
I’m guessing a hotshot Keynote Speaker, Known for Being Known, doesn’t use public libraries…but, you know, most other people do, as rising circulation demonstrates. Funny how these big buildings are built with bond votes…
remember
You can’t spell “futurist” without “f*cking retarded opportunist.”
Not you, Blake. You’re swell.
Commercials
Actually, all I get is a mindless commercial for Epsom. I can’t get to the real program without having the Epsom commercial play over and over.
Technology is great. When it works.
R. Lee Hadden (These are my own opinions!)