ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries July/A u g u s t 1 9 9 7 / 4 6 7 The Midas Crisis: C & M News in 2 0 3 0 By Peter Lyman W hat y o u m a y he reading a b out in 3 3 years Ed note: In co n clu sio n o f o u r year-long 30th anniversary celebration, C&RL News invited Peter Lyman to predict w hat acade libraries might be like in the year 2030. Here he shares with us his take on the changes in store for academic libraries and librarians over the next 30 years through C&RL News reports from the future. News of the future What will academic libraries and librarianship be like by the year 2030? Futurist predictions are notoriously wrong, revealing far more about the unquestioned assum ptions o f the present than about the future. In this spirit, as a way of thinking about our ow n assumptions, hopes, and fears, the reader is invited to consider the news o f the future as it might ap p e ar in the pages o f C&RL News over the next third o f a century. While reading the Web version of the New York Times this morning, there was a pow er surge, and for a few seconds I was connected to a strange three-dim ensional signal called “C&RL News of the Future.” I managed to print out the fragments that appear below, each fol­ lowed by my ow n comments interpreting their meaning. The phrase “The Midas Crisis” occurs often in these fragments, apparently referring to the possibility that in the future both higher education an d research libraries may starve while surrounded by the wealth o f know ledge w hich w e now call “the information revolu­ tion.” Fragment 1: W hat makes information useful? June 2007. A national debate rages in C&RL News about whether Broken W indows©, a new MacroHard® information product pro­ viding compulsory instantaneous access to all new information, represents the greatest mic advancement in the history of education or the end of civilization. Public opinion surveys reveal that users are becoming less informed because so much information is available it is impossible to actually find any answers. The American Council of Learned Societies is changing its name to the American Coun­ cil of Invisible Colleges as scholarly disciplines become closed guilds, passing on techniques for ignoring new information from master to apprentice in secret ceremonies. January 2017. C&RL News reports that the JCN Corporation has invented an advanced computer named Profound Indigo (PI) to pro­ cess information and, through superior in­ telligence, actually answer questions. PI was designed to take the ultimate test of creative interpretation, answering all questions at an academic research library reference desk for an hour. Unfortunately, the Cyborg's eyes began to weep silicon tears after 35 min­ utes. Soon after, librarians began to be called Oracles and were given the exclusive right to wear robes of 32 bit colors, and honored as the only professionals able to bring order to the growing chaos of information. Pay scales for librarians, however, did not rise. Even librarians couldn't figure out why. Comment: The Library o f Babel? Perhaps the predictions that the Web will be- P e te r L y m a n is u n iv e r sity lib ra r ia n a t the U niversity o f C alifornia, Berkeley; e-m ail: p lym a n @ lib ra ry.b erk eley.ed u mailto:plyman@library.berkeley.edu 4 6 8 /C & R L N ew s The computer cannot know context: librarians know that understanding the meaning of a question must precede finding answers to it. com e the new Library of Alexandria will com e true by the year 2030. And yet, as Borges o b ­ served in a definitive manner in 'The Library of Babel,” “no reader ever needs or wants all hu­ man knowledge.” If a library were to be infinite, using the library might seem like this Borges description: “There are official searchers, inquisi­ tors. I have observed them carrying out their functions: they are always exhausted . . . no o n e expects to discover anything.”1 The Web is a library as it might be designed by writers, a place w here everything can be published, but a real library must be designed for readers, a place w here know ledge can be found. To un­ derstand the soul o f a library, o n e must under­ stand the way its reader co m m u n ity wants to learn, remember, an d create knowledge. A li­ brary is not simply about information, w hether books or com puters, it is about learning. Fragment 1 is about w hether information is o f any value if it cannot be used. W hat the librarian know s that the com puter cannot know is context-, librarians know that understanding the m eaning o f a question must precede find­ ing answers to it. Fragment 2: The Midas Crisis January 2001. Market mechanisms have re­ placed all public institutions, including librar­ ies, schools, and museums. In 2010, C&RL News reported that President Gates© dedi­ cated the new NYPL C yberM all, Inc., lo­ cated on the site of the old New York Pub­ lic Library. Since the turn of the century, NYPL had again become a private lending library, known affectionately to thousands of school children as "Books R Us." November 2020. In hindsight it is clear that higher education is best organized by p ri­ vate enterprise, thus colleges and universi­ ties have been quickly purchased by major corporations. Unnecessary assets were sold off, transforming college football into a pro­ fessional sport, and campuses into educa­ tion factories. Course sitcoms taught by na­ tionally famous teachers, such as Ro­ seanne Barr, are sold through cable networks into the home market. A p ril 2030. C&RL News editorialized about "The Midas Crisis," for at the same time that technology was creat­ ing a renaissance of scientific discov­ ery, knowledge was being privatized. W ithout schools and libraries, sharp new class divisions formed, based upon unequal access to the new wealth of knowledge. o m m en t: T h e m a r k e t p l a c e o f id e a s ? erhaps inform ation technologies will m ake ossible a new kind o f democratic society by 030, based u p o n the recognition that access o information is a fundamental hum an and civil ight. This w ould b e the best o f times for li­ raries, a time w hen information will have been ecognized as a resource for developing a full ense of being a person; as a medium for mem­ ership in community; as a technology for trans­ orming w ork from routine to creative experi­ nce; and making possible direct participation n the polity. Yet, paradoxically, 2030 might also b e the orst o f times for libraries and librarians, an ge in w hich information will have becom e a ure econom ic commodity, an d in w hich the aintenance o f a stable m arket system is the nly public good. Fragment 2 describes a dem o­ ratic society w ithout a public realm; there are o public subsidies for the use o f knowledge, ather value an d price are based u p o n use and tility alone. The reader is conceived o f as a onsum er not as a citizen; as o n e seeking en ­ ertainm ent not education; and as an isolated ndividual not as a m em ber o f a community. In a true golden age o f know ledge, librari- nship might be described as the m anagem ent f the currencies w hich are the true w ealth of ll social groups—the currencies of know ledge h ich m ake p o ssib le social c o h e s io n an d rogress. Culture has always b ee n a currency f social life, providing a sense o f shared val­ es and history. But today, as Walter Wriston rgues, know ledge, in the form o f information, as becom e the primary currency o f economic ealth: “The pursuit o f w ealth is now largely he pursuit of information, and the application f information to the m eans of production.”2 The problem o f the next 33 years will be to alance these tw o forms of social currency: one ublic, one private; one the currency o f a gift C P p 2 t r b r s b f e i w a p m o c n r u c t i a o a w p o u a h w t o b p J u ly /A u g u s t 1 9 9 7 / 4 6 9 economy, the other o f a market economy. A community is always a gift culture, even eco­ nomic organizations are ultimately based u pon trust.’ But gift and market exchange are comple­ mentary, not opposites, for the formation of digital communities creates the possibility of new markets. Innovation in the next 33 years will not be the product o f intelligent machines, as Wriston predicts. The essence o f innovation will be social, the application o f information to the m ode of production, that is, the transformation o f the social relations in w hich w e organize the econom y and indeed all institutional life; this certainly includes academ e and, by exten­ sion, academic research libraries. Fragment 3: Back to the future September 2025. Today England, the first and now the last na tio n state, jo in e d Gowanda, the global electronic village, the next evolutionary stage of humankind's po­ litical organization. The British Library will merge with the Electronic Scriptorum, the Web-based union library. Intellectual prop­ erty will henceforth be governed by barter; anyone using information must place some­ thing of equal worth into the global potlatch. All knowledge containers will henceforth be called "documents," and authors and pub­ lishers will be called scriveners. The word "information" henceforth will return to its tra­ ditional meaning in scholastic education: the use of books to place form into the mind. C o m m e n t: T h e p o e t i c s o f i n f o r m a t i o n p o l i c y It is ironic that futurists must use feudal termi­ nology to escape the heavy hand o f industrial­ ism, and even the language of technology— information, docum ent, data—an ted ates the invention of print by centuries. But it is not an accident that the political rhetoric of the late 20th century uses industrial metaphors to d e­ scribe digital communication, for they serve to justify the dom inance of established economic interests over the new media. Using the “infor­ mation highway” m etaphor places political con­ trol o f federal information policy in the Com­ merce Department because that is w here inter­ state com merce was regulated. Notwithstand­ ing, netw ork com m unication in no w ay re­ sem bles th e tran sp o rtatio n o f com m odities across state lines. In a manufacturing economy, “copyright,” literally regulation o f the mechani­ cal p ro cess o f rep ro d u ctio n , g o v ern e d the boundary betw een private and public p ro p ­ erty in information. But in digital documents the creation and reproduction of a text cannot be separated, since copying and sharing access is the essence of the technology. Finally, while “universal access” defines a standard of distribu­ tive justice for information access, unlike rural electrification or phone service, it is public ac­ cess to a com m on f u n d o f knowledge that is criti­ cal to the digital library, not access alone. The poetics o f libraries and information will not be found in visions o f either the future or the past but in new w ords that describe how communities o f readers actually create and use know ledge in the new media environments. If the poetics of government information policy use industrial and manufacturing metaphors, librarians will simply have to becom e poets to create a better future. Fragment 4: Nomads in cyberspace July 2015. Until today's announcement of The Nomad™ by QuadEye Systems of Sand­ paper, California, personal software agents have intelligently searched the 'N et for in­ formation. The Nomad™ is a miracle of bio­ technology, a synthesis of software and hu­ man DNA which gradually appropriates the personality of its owner. Nomad addicts sit glued to the 'Net endlessly, vicariously wan­ dering the W eb in search of entertainment and knowledge. September 2019. In what has been dubbed the revolution of the Cybernauts, the N o ­ mads threw off the rule of the Bods, as they call their human parasites. Protesting the social isolation and anomie which humans have created on the 'Net, the new tribe cre­ ated the first public institution in cyberspace, a place they called The Libe. (Midas cont. on pa g e 499) Since the turn of the century, NYPL had again become a private lending library, known affectionately to thousands of school children as "Books R Us." J u ly/A u g u s t 1 9 9 7 / 4 9 9 The equation of library materials with widgets and libraries with warehouses should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. 4) Intangible electronic documents owned and maintained by other agencies and available electronically for a fee or without payment. It is evident that the first tw o categories are the likely first choice of most library users— they have the merit of being instantly available (in most cases) and free. They are also listed in the online catalog or, in the case of the second class, somewhere else in the library’s integrated system. Increasingly, information about classes 3 and 4 is available in online systems through connections to databases as diverse as the OCLC online union catalog, Melvyl, CARL, ERIC, etc. Many systems are also giving their patrons easy access to the Web. Given the ready accessibil­ ity of these four concentric circles o f library materials, the discussion o f w hat constitutes a “collection” becom es som ew hat metaphysical. From an accountant’s point o f view, a “collec­ tion” consists of items bought and paid for; from the librarian’s and, most important, the library user’s point o f view, the “collection” is that universe of materials that is readily and freely available. The keys to availability and the factors that m ake this new definition of collection possible are bibliographic control and preservation. Li­ brarians have mastered the art of bibliographic control for the tangible objects they ow n and have built complex systems to make the w here­ abouts of those objects known. We have also m ade great strides in the preservation of frag­ ile materials and, by virtue of our stewardship, have ensured that the recorded know ledge and information of the past and present will be avail­ able to future generations. Are w e up to the challenge of extending that bibliographic con­ trol and preservation to electronic documents? I believe so, if w e have the necessary determi­ nation, organization, and confidence. ■ (Midas coni, fr o m page 469) C om m ent: A p l a c e c a ll e d c y b e r i a New nations express themselves first by writ­ ing a constitution, and then by founding a na­ tional library to define a national culture and literature. By 2030 new forms of community and modes of education will evolve, reflecting the increasing cultural diversity o f civil society and new economic conditions. How will these new communal forms reinvent the library to manage their knowledge currencies— as a func­ tion or as a place, or both? Cyberia, that is, the new social forms and communities w hich are taking shape within computer mediated communication,4 may pro­ vide a hom e for a new kind of public place which might deserve to be called a library in this sociological sense. Even today there are promising experiments in network-based com­ munities, including: the collaboratory experi­ ments sponsored by the National Science Foun­ dation; game spaces, such as Lambda Moo; Web pages, lists, and e-mail used as social glue by social movements such as Greenpeace. New media might serve as a m edium of public education as 18th-century art once did, art historian Barbara Stafford argues, but only if they are linked to “com mon rituals and pu b ­ lic concerns.”5 This is precisely what libraries have done for print in creating public spaces, and by shaping collections that reflect commu­ nity interests and concerns. This has yet to be done for digital information and cannot be ac­ complished by markets alone. Notes 1. Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Ba­ bel,” Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 84. 2. Walter Wriston, The Twilight o f Sover­ eignty (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), xii. 3. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Vir­ tues a n d the Creation o f Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). 4. Arturo Escobar, “Welcome to Cyberia,” Current Anthropology 35 (June 1994), 211-31. 5. Barbara Maria Stafford, A rtfu l Science: Enlightenment, E ntertainm ent a n d the Eclipse o f Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), 311. ■