CiL2009: Monday Keynote

I'm inaugurating my shiny new blog with the notes I took during Computers in Libraries 2009 earlier this week. Mostly they're what was up on the screens with supplemental comments when I had time to fill things in.

Monday Keynote
Friending Libraries: The Nodes in People's Social Networks
Lee Rainie (lrainie on Twitter) from Pew Internet & American Life Project

2000-slow, stationary connections built around my computer
2008-fast, mobile connections built around outside servers and storage

ecosystem changes
1. volume of info grows
2. variety of info increases -many alternatives available
3. velocity of info speeds up -more stuff coming at you in more ways (info you care about)
4. times and places to experience media enlarge
5. people's vigilance for info expands (when you care, you can dig more deeply) AND contracts (set up more rigorous screens -people exist in continuous state of partial attention)
6. immersive qualities of media are more compelling
7. relevance of info improves
8. number of info "voices" explodes-and becomes more findable (~50% of adults & 2/3 of teens have created content)
9. voting and ventilating are enabled
10. social networks are more vivid (people fall back on their friends when encountering something they don't understand, etc.)
-institutions can be actors in people's networks in ways they never were before

behold Homo connectus
a different species with a different sense of

• expectation about access to info
• place and distance
• presence with others
• opportunities to play
• time use
• personal efficacy
• social networking possibilities

new tech-user typology
"The Mobile Difference" -assets, actions, attitudes
39% are motivated by mobility
61% are tied to stationary media

Motivated by mobility

• Digital collaborators (8%)
• Ambivalent networkers (7%) -"obligation", can't afford to be off the grid, even thought they want to be; 30% students
• Media movers (7%) -share info more than create it, though like dig. photog.
• Roving nodes (9%) -56% female; 100% have cell phones; heavy internet use; tech gives them control
• Mobile newbies (8%) -act of getting a cell phone was like a conversion experience for them in the way it opened up the world; 55% female; median 50 (oldest MBM group); none create internet content

Tied to stationary media

• Desktop veterans (13%) -55% male; skews white -mobiliity doesn't matter, use computer while sitting down
• Drifting surfers (14%) -52% female, tech doesn't help much
• Information encumbered (10%) -suffer from info overload; skews white; 67% male (highest)
• Tech indifferent (10$) -not heavy internet users; 55% female; least likely users of everything
• Off the network (14%) -no cell phones or internet access; 57% female, oldest (67 median); see no lifestyle improvements w/ tech

friending libraries are 5+ things...

• pathways to problem-solving information
• pathways to personal enrichment
• pathways to entertainment
• pathways to new kinds of social networks built around people, media, and institutions
• pathways to the wisdom of crowds, so you fill your own future here...