I
remember when I started working in a bank a couple of years ago, the teamwork at
that moment was constituted with approximately a hundred people and
each one was in charge of a single duty. After two years, the team
was reduced to half and four years later the team was formed only by
twenty people and the workplace was occupied with more machines than
human workers. But who should we blame for a such an enormous
redundancy? The person who refuses to follow the advance of
technology or the technology itself? Technology is here to stay and
there is no other alternative than accept it and adapt to its power.
The same thing that happened in the bank, happened in other areas as
well. It is happening now in all areas of society. Human organic machine is been substituted by A.I (artificial intelligence) which is another kind of machine, much more efficient and this machine
never get tired or get sick. It just need some maintenance regularly. The Big Corporations, as usual always eager for profits,
have Interesting examples of how human beings are not necessary in
some jobs any more. I.e: Drones have been tested by Amazon to
replace its delivers, according to the Guardian:
“Amazon
has announced that it will partner with the British government to run
tests exploring the viability of delivery of small parcels by drone –
the first time such tests have been run in the UK. The company
announced that a cross-government team supported by the Civil
Aviation Authority (CAA) gave permission to Amazon to explore three
key areas: operations beyond line of sight, obstacle avoidance and
flights where one person operates multiple autonomous drones. The
experiment will look at drones carrying deliveries weighing 2.3kg
(5lb) or less – which make up 90% of Amazon’s sales, a company
spokeswoman said.” (1)
With the exploration of high technology in all areas of human life, what could
happen to our beloved area, Library and Information Sciences? How the old fashioned librarian should behave in these modern digital times?
The same kind of redundancy that has happened to the bank that I once worked to, has been happening to my local library as well. The
warm and happy faces were substituted by efficient and cold
computers. Again, according to The Guardian:
“Peter
Preston, in dismissing Save Our Libraries Day, asserts that
technology has changed our reading habits (Making
way for the new,
7 February). He means, of course, that technology has changed his
reading
habits. His view is typical of many journalists and politicians now
commenting on public libraries: comfortably off, with internet
access, Kindles, iPads and Amazon accounts, they have no need to use
their local libraries, and have little idea how much goes on in them.
Yet they advocate, as Preston does, that "some things have to
go" and point to libraries.” (2)
Unfortunately,
it is sad but true words, specially for the old fashionable reader
who really loves the smell and the touch of books and compares the library as some sacred place like the Vatican for Catholicism
or some sacred stones for the native Hawaiians. For these kind of readers, closing a library or changing its physical collection to digital collection which is accessible only through a machine instead by their own hands, has the same effect of closing a church or destroying a sacred stone.
But at the end, the one who do not want to be included in the massive group of people who are being superfluous every day in the I.T societies, is the one who thinks that adaptation in this kind of society is the
cleverest decision to be made to prevent redundancy.
References: