“The Machine is Us/ing Us.”

After watching the YouTube videos suggested as discovery resources for Thing 5, I re-watched “The Machine is Us/ing Us.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/NLlGopyXT_g&rel=1

(It reminds me of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage, only in video form.) At the end it said, we need to rethink—among other things—governance. We’ll certainly need to rethink libraries and, for instance, how they are funded and organized. As long as people want to check out books and other items, and as long as they can’t or won’t access them through digital downloads, there will be a place for brick and mortar libraries. But there’s no telling how long that will be, and as for the Web 2.0 library features, there is a whole new model in which we are competing with and no doubt co-operating with libraries all over America and even the world.

I can’t help wondering who will be willing to fund what, when so much is going to available from other sources on the web.

PS: If you want a Philip Glass-ish experience, start the “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video, then open another window and start it again. Polyrhythmic music!

And BTW: can't you embed videos in Blogger? I tried to embed that video and it didn't show up.