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Sunday morning started early at the Alexander Street Press breakfast, where they shared information about their upcoming releases.Breakfast was great and they had a very interesting speaker, Gary Giddens, a jazz critic and writer, who spoke about his career in journalism and his long connection with jazz music.After checking out the exhibits and Lauren P.’s booksigning, I headed to “Who Cares About Privacy: Boundaries, Millennials and the Myspace Mindset.”I missed most of the first speaker’s presentation, but got to hear all of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s discussion.The most memorable thing he said, to much applause, was that there is no such thing as a millennial, and that looking at issues through a generational lens creates huge inaccuracies.Regarding millennials, he mentioned three problems that a focus on generations creates (though I think this could be applied to a focus on any generation): it makes them exotic (different from us), it homogenizes them (the same as each other), and encourages pandering to their needs.He also discussed his strong views regarding privacy and the many ways that it is violated by commercial and state institutions without most of the public realizing it.
During the afternoon, I attended two LITA events, Top Technology Trends and the President’s Forum.The Top Technology Trends was a panel discussion looking at mobile and cloud computing and open access issues, as well as the top three trends of each panelist.A few things that stood out to me were:
-more exploration of the digital humanities
-reducing our carbon footprint
-people used to “go” online and now we “are” online
-changes in our expectations regarding access to information and broadband/wireless issues
The President’s Forum focused mostly on the Dutch Boys, their Shanachie Road Trip across the US, and what they are doing at their home library, DOK in Delft.They showed several video clips and images of their building and how they are using technology to connect their patrons with cultural and historical information.