Lazy Post, Full Brain

I am closing in on a deadline for about 5000 words which will be a chapter in a book published by Information Today (the amiable Rachel Singer Gordon is the editor--I say amiable because she is, so far, a gentle editor. Mind you, I haven't passed the deadline yet.) Nothing like a little pressure to stoke the creative fires...although this is offset by the performance anxiety induced by knowing my companion authors include Michael Stephens, Jenny Levine, Stephen Abram, and John Blyberg.

And we have begun, in earnest, working on AARFO ("Another Amazing Report From OCLC" or, if you share the views of some of our readers and commenters you might prefer this title "Another Alarmist Report From OCLC"). It has a vague shape as yet but will definitely include another big survey, and will muse on privacy, trust and the value of information.

And I am heading to Boise, Idaho soon to participate in giving a workshop being offered by the State Library, "Evolving Library Services for Digital Natives". My co-presenters are Aaron Schmidt, Sarah Houghton, Stephen Abram....not a slouch among them so I have to do my homework.

My head is full and my laptop is overheating and I am suffering synthesis-fatigue so I am just popping into IAG to share some things with you.

The following 3 from The Institute of the Future.

All The World's A Game: the future of context aware gaming. May 2006 (PDF report). This seems to be just one chapter from the full report but it's still interesting, and the full report may appear sometime.

The Cybernomadic Landscape March 2004 (PDF report)

The New Spatial Lanscape: artifacts from the future. 2004 (PDF report)

And revisiting/rethinking an article I co-wrote with OCLC VP Gary Houk, in 2003, published in the Oregon Library Association Quarterly: "Handcrafted or Mass Produced: what are you willing to pay and is it worth it?"

Rereading the 1993 piece "The Places of Books in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Geoffrey Nunberg (who wrote the delightful ditty we reproduced at the beginning of the Social Landscape of the Environmental Scan) .

A 2005 Wired article by the now somewhat notorious writer Kevin Kelly (he wrote the article "Scan This Book!" for the NYT Magazine) that will, I hope, show his creds in writing futurist stuff. The guy was involved in The Well. Say no more.

A long, fascinating essay "Networked Place" by Karys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg that "addresses both the networking of space and the spatiality of the network."

And these books are in a pile beside my desk in my office at home....I am trying to read (or reread) them all at once but that's not really working. I do not exist in more than one place at a time unfortunately (or at least, that I am aware off).

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos.... Charles Seife
Programming the Universe : A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos Seth Lloyd
FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication Neil Gershenfeld
Future Frequencies Derek Woodgate
Shaping Things Bruce Sterling
The Social Life of Information John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells.

I am not a pointy-headed wordsmith all the time. I am happily reading the second book, The Water Room, of a (so far) four book mystery series by Christopher Fowler, featuring two still-working London policemen in their mid-eighties. Quirky, funny, and a celebration of older people.