March 14th was a lovely Spring day at Macalester College in St. Paul for the opening of the 4th annual Library Technology Conference. Andrew McLaughlin, who left his position as Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the Obama administration to become Vice President of Tumblr, gave a dynamic opening address. McLaughlin is also a fellow at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society.
The importance of librarians was acknowledged at the beginning of the speech as McLaughlin shared his experience with Internet free speech as an attorney in the 1990's. He realized at that time that librarians do the work of civilization in spreading knowledge. It is important for librarians to "join the fights" that surround us and be engaged as possible. McLaughlin amazed his audience by telling them that their smartphones have more technology than NASA had in 1969 to put man on the moon. He spoke of Moore's Law which doubles the amount of technology for the amount of money. Prices to run cloud applications will continue to drop as global Internet traffic continues to boom. There is no scarcity in processing power. In 2001, Africa had a single fiber cable while in 2012 connectivity for Africa is booming. A problem with Internet is that it is not evenly distributed.
I appreciated the Internet background that McLaughlin gave in his presentation. While not just a telephone network, an accurate architectural description was available for the Internet as early as 1964. The Internet is a distributive network based on an end to end principle that any point can reach any other point. Due to the openess and lack of central controls, we do not need permission for communicating with anyone we wish to communicate with in the world. While "messy", the Internet is worth defending and fighting for as a "best efforts" network. The Internet dominates our information because it is fundamentally different from any past communication being any point can now communicate with any other point.
RECENT EXAMPLES
1. airbnb.com A site that was new to me. Anyone ranks anywhere to stay.
2. Khan Academy. I had just watched an interesting segment on the previous Sunday on 60 Minutes.
3. Egypt in 2011. The dark side where communication was shut off. Egypt was able to use one building as a "choking point." An example where like anything available to mankind, tools can be used for good or evil. Governments can officially use censorship or control to steer the way they want. The Internet is borderless while nations are bordered.
4. The 2008 Obama campaign which spearheaded the use of social media, now seems primitive.
5. Experience with SKYPE while in the Obama White House during the Haiti earthquake.
6. Iceland. After economic problems there in 2007 and 2008, the whole government went into default.
7. Latvia Petitions. Coders set up a decentralized website. Anyone with an idea can post, but only the creator has the URL. After about 1,000 Latvians give the idea a thumbs up, the idea goes to a public site. After enough support is generated there, the award is five minutes of time on the floor of the Latvian Parliament - real world movement in real world government!
dw.de/dw/article/0,,15343035,00.html
8. United States. We the People on the White House website.
whitehouse.gov/petitions
(The examples show that technology does NOT solve anything, but gets into the government)
Internet is power
Decentralization = Power
Data, News, Culture and Politics
Passive Consumption leads to Active Creation
The Internet makes it possible to be an active presenter
Andrew McLaughlin next spoke about Hot Spots for Nerdy Librarians (and those who love them)
He spoke of the Open Internet
Net Neutrality
Wireless
Competition (or lack)
Proposed SOPA/PIPA Legislation
Most "nerds" believe in government hands off of the Internet. An example from the 1980's was when the U. S. government broke up "Ma Bell" and re-concentration took place with lots of different businesses.
McLaughlin also talked about concern with copyright infringement in the entertainment and music industries. His company, Tumblr, was able to generate about 160,000 calls to Congress in one day during the time of the SOPA/PIPA debating on a cluster of issues around copyright and creativity. The copyright system is difficult to access as it is still paper driven. If it moves fully online, the system could be searchable, but the Copyright Office will only change with pressure from the public. Currently the National Institutes of Health is pioneering the move to public access, but for bills in Congress to move forward, there are also bills to move backward.
Before taking questions, Andrew McLaughlin challenged us to:
Fight for the Future
for Freedom of Access and Freedom of Information because they matter
The Center for Democracy and Technology is a fantastic organization in Washington, DC for public knowledge.
cdt.org
Andrew McLaughlin even surprised a few librarians by sending tweets during his presentation. He showed the Twitter feed for #ltc2012 on the big screen so tweeters could even see what they had just tweeted during his speech.
