This is your brain on Google.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Atlantic Monthly)

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this?

Haven't these people read M.T. Anderson's Feed?

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm beginning to think that Google is, in fact, evil (and I'm only partially being tongue-in-cheek).

Book Collectors

I'm not a snob about books, but I'm probably a show-off -- as who isn't? My showing-off is of a pretty low-key if not completely abstruse sort, though. No one has ever noticed -- much less commented upon -- my collections of minor German Romantics, accounts by UFO abductees, books by and about hoboes, or memoirs by former employees of the New York Evening Graphic.

So states Luc Sante in his article The Book Collection That Devoured My Life. Very entertaining--take a look.

I can somewhat identify, although my own library remains steady at about 400-500 books. It's not likely to get bigger anytime soon either, as I've sadly curbed my desire to own books for the sake of owning. It is still good to keep my favorites, the collectible ones, the ones that have sentimental value, or the ones that I really want to read but that a library is unlikely to have. So many books, so little time!

Some trivia: I like it that Mr. Sante uses the term "library rat" to describe himself at the end of the article. He states earlier that he's bilingual in French, and "library rat," or un rat de la bibliothèque, is a French term equivalent to our English "bookworm."

Library Job Titles

This link will give you an idea of all of the jobs out there for someone with an MLIS degree--and perhaps also why librarians need to know more than just the Dewey Decimal system.

TS

This is like the place where I work, except that this is massively bigger. It looks like they have about twenty tech. serv. staff, whereas in our library we have two--me and my supervisor. Our library is a lot smaller, so my supervisor and I do all of the acquisitions, cataloging, processing, mending, and stacks maintenance (which you don't see in this video--consists of inventory, shifting the collection to make space, some shelving, dusting, etc.). Kind of a goofy video, but it gives a good idea of what we do.

Murphy's Law

Of course now that it's finals week, my internet is down at home. It's been down for four days. I am crossing my fingers that the technician coming on Friday some time between noon and five will be able to fix it.

The upside is that I was able to print my final at work, the questions look doable, and I only really need the internet for two out of the ten. On top of that, I have until next Tuesday to finish it.

And then, no more school until next January--I'm taking summer and fall off for wedding planning and . . . you guessed it . . . wedding. :)