Thoughts on Flickr tools

Looking over the tools on Flickr I am astounded at the sheer number of them and how many cater to the ego of the user. Make a movie poster starring yourself! Create a trading card of yourself! Design a magazine cover featuring yourself! Make yourself a STAR! A SUPERSTAR! Meanwhile life goes on all around you. Stroking the ego of the potential consumer is certainly the path to getting more buy-in on newer technologly and systems. Always bigger and faster and better and more sophisticated and more expensive and oh by the way you need to replace everything you bought last year. There is a Circle of Life going on here that has to do with materialism and it's close cousin- consumerism. Up and up goes the spiral of technology until - the lights go out.

This is a bit extreme and I will admit that some of the tools promote positive communication among mostly priviledge people (those who can afford the technology and the time to interact with all these features) but it is all a bit overwhelming isn't it? Oh well, have fun and don't think about life passing you by.

Desert Picture in Jordan

Here is Lawrence of Arabia's other environment. The desert in the south of Jordan. He understood how beautiful the desert could be even during the rigors of the Arab Revolt.

Clouds Hill

I hope to travel to England with my family in 2009 and one of the places I hope to visit is Lawrence of Arabia's cottage Clouds Hill. How could history not come alive when we walk where Lawrence walked and look at the view that Lawrence saw before his fatal motorcycle accident. Lawrence used the cottage as a retreat and filled it with books and record albums. Not a bad idea in today's rush rush world.

Welcome to my blog

Libraries and lifelong learning go together.

But the interesting thing is how to do it. As a famous wicked witch once said- "these things must be done delicately."

Now for a slight detour, eh.

I myself feel that libraries are democratic institutions that use shared resources to benefit not only the community, but to support the more universal values of the Enlightenment and help people become educated, tolerant, and diverse human beings. This is one way that mankind gets off the dogmatic, uneducated, consumerist treadmill and escapes being clones who listen to the same things, read the same things, and think the same things. Clones who shelter themselves from ideas that challenge, music that stimulates, and films that expect them to be intelligent themselves.

And it is the librarians that have as their mission the job of running these institutions and selecting the materials that best support these goals. Yes, selecting based on knowledge of resources, on reviews, on the needs of the community, and on making the world a better place.

So lifelong learning is important but so is learning in order for mankind to survive the next few billion years until the sun swallows the earth. It would be nice if on the day before that event occurs someone got to watch Lawrence of Arabia, or experience a Shakespeare play, or even was able to finish "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Any other thoughts about libraries and the ultimate fate of mankind?