Brown and Duguid

I think what struck me most about reading this chapter was the account of the failure of the hot desking experiment at the ad agency Chiat/Day. The details of how and why the experiment failed should be a cautionary tale for librarians who believe that technology should drive the direction of libraries.

Brown and Duguid relate the postulation that hot desking was the future. Wired magazine followed the attempts of Chiat/Day to enact hot desking, but the experiment failed to take into account the social aspects of office work. While the technology was new at the time it was believed that the existing technology would revolutionize work habits.

Instead, Brown and Duguid relate the “productivity paradox”. While technology has grown by leaps and bounds, productivity hasn’t. Perhaps this is an indication that society advances arithmetically while technology grows exponentially. Perhaps the lesson here is that technology can’t overcome society but society can harness and use technology in a supplemental way. Therefore, libraries shouldn’t be too goggle-eyed at the possibilities of technology. E-readers will never replace books but may be an interesting alternative. Digital libraries aren’t meant to replace brick and mortar libraries but are meant to be complementary to them. I think this realization will help bridge the generation gap that exists in libraries. Some “old-school” librarians are threatened by technology while some right-out-of-library-school technology geek thinks “old-schoolers” are out of touch. It’s most likely that these two types of librarians actually need each other.