The
event was facilitated by futurists Michele Bowman and
Sandy Burchsted, who introduced the 10 trends and
facilitated the workshop. The 10 trends included:
Everyware:
Information will be embedded in everyday objects and
places in meaningful ways. Things will think and interact
with each other and us-storing, transmitting and creating
data.
“IAAM”
It’s all about Me: Describes a shift in consumer
demand from conspicuous mass consumption to mass
personalized consumption.
Information
Visualization: As we transition from a text-based to a
visual-based society, information visualization is
undergoing a creative technological renaissance.
Text-based search is giving way to semantic and
sense-based search, creating a new dimension in our hunt
for information.
We
Media: Armed with easy-to-use web publishing tools and
a host of increasingly powerful mobile devices, online
audiences have become active participants in the creation
and dissemination of news and information.
Google
World: The Internet economy is facilitating the
disintermediation of dozens of industries, from television
and media to banking and airline travel. The
“middleman” is becoming extinct.
Power
of Us: Connective technologies are expanding our
ability to cooperate and create value. Collaboration is
emerging as an engine of growth and innovation.
No
Boundaries: From communities of interest to virtual
worlds, IDENTITY is giving away to AFFINITY as people
increasingly negotiate and redefine their personal social
spaces.
Friend-formation:
We’re starting to use our friends to find, sort, vette
and curate the ever increasing fire hose of information.
Being “friended” equals being trusted and relevant.
Social
Media and Web 2.0: The social media sphere is the
primary means for disseminating information and ideas
throughout society. Social media sites are idea
transmission systems, neural pathways of our emerging
global brain.
Innovators
R Us: The era of not invented here is giving way to a
new era where everyone is an innovator. The people
formerly known as customers are now co-creators.
After
the trends discussion, the whole group voted for the top
two trends that were most important and uncertain to the
future of statewide library information services. The top
two selected were Google World and Power of Us.
The
group then broke into smaller groups to consider the
impact of these trends over the next 12 years. These
groups also selected a third trend to add to their future
thinking. After brainstorming all of the possibilities,
the groups then worked on creating future scenarios. Each
group created headlines for the China Daily: Special
Edition: The Future of Information Services 2020. The
headlines and brief stories conveyed possible futures. One
headline read, “Truthiness Database Hacked! People Flock
to the Library.”
From
all of the creative thinking several themes have emerged
that are now being examined by a smaller group of Think
Tank participants. These themes are guiding the
development of ideas for new information services that we
can begin to build now. These ideas will be shared at the
Annual Conference of the California Library Association in
November 2008 and through other venues to get input from
library staff members across the State. After the feedback
is collected, a builders group will be formed to plan for
implementation of one or more of the concepts.
If
you’d like to learn more, and join the NING community
that has been created to share information and create
connections, please send an email message to saldrich@library.ca.gov.
