On the Muskegon ferry ride across Lake Michigan on my way to the LAMP Institute, I noticed tons of passengers entertaining themselves with information. Many read books, of course, but I also saw people texting, playing games on their cellphones, using Kindles, doing business on netbook laptops, and watching Dora the Explorer DVDs with their kids on personal DVD players. One fellow LAMP attendee was Googling jobs in the middle of Lake Michigan on his Blackberry (at least until he could no longer get a signal).
All these technological distractions got me wondering: Do we even know how to be idle anymore? Instead of standing on deck and appreciating the boat ride and the wind in their hair, most passengers were in the cabin, entertaining or informing themselves with technology. This article in the New York times seems to support my suspicion: computers are addictive and sometimes multitasking is not as efficient as we think.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html
A sufferer of iPhone-envy myself (the reference librarian in me wants to be able to instantly find out when the Sears Tower became the Willis Tower while I'm walking down Jackson Street in Chicago), I have resisted getting a smartphone-- or as a friend calls hers, a "Crackberry"-- in order to protect myself from information overload. Librarians of the future need to think about the implications of a world where information is always turned "on."
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