Earlier this week I was at the SLA conference in Seattle. I took lots of notes, but didn’t have a lot of time to make them into semi-coherent blog posts, what with all the evening activities (see next post). So, these entires are being posted a smidge after the fact, but will hopefully still be interesting and useful. In the past, I’ve written narratives of the sessions I’ve attended. In the interest of time, I am mainly going to be posting my notes from the different sessions, but I have cleaned them up and added my own observations to the key points, and I have written a few summary introductory paragraphs for each. I hope these post still have some flow because I personally don’t like reading other people’s posts that are just a serious of bullet-points with no context. If you are interested in this kind of thing, let me know if this format works so I know if I can use it in the future.
Okay, enough with all of that. After a wonderful weekend visiting our friends in the area (more about that once I have time to upload a few pictures), I arrived at the Seattle Convention Center Sunday afternoon just in time for a reception in the exhibit hall. That was followed by our Opening Keynote Speaker, Vint Cerf, considered one the fathers of the Internet, being interviewed by Charlie Rose. Cerf is currently working at Google as “Chief Internet Evangelist”. Not sure I like the made up title, but whatever. The opening business meeting seemed to take up a lot of time and only left about 45 minutes for the Vint Cerf interview, but it was still an interesting session.
Cerf stated (not too revolutionarily) that the power of the Internet is in its openness and accessibility, that it gives ordinary people the freedom to invent new content. The Internet grants access to everyone’s knowledge as long as they are willing to share it.
He said that he is concerned that we are so reliant on software to interpret digital documents – what if the software it no longer supported and we can no longer interpret the bits of data. Yadda yadda yadda, this is not a new concern. Personally, in addition to being reliant on software that may become obsolete, I’m really concerned about all of the Internet companies that are being bought up by one or two big players (I’m looking at you Google – you qualify as a reason for concern now, too).
What happens if one of these tools doesn’t make the kind of money that the buying company hopes it will? Will they stop developing it and let it fade away? What if a buying company eventually goes under? What happens to all of those little companies it bought up along the way? Yahoo! owns del.icio.us now. What if their ongoing corporate battle, or the growing dominance of Google, results in a long slow death (or even a quick one) of Yahoo!?
Sure, in theory someone else could create a similar tool, but what if there are patents involved? Would the big company sue a little guy for a product they aren’t developing anymore? Of course they would! It happens all the time, and especially now when the economy is struggling and more companies are trying to monetize their intellectual property more and more to make up the gap.
Regarding access to the Internet in foreign countries, Cert believes that oppressive governments will ultimately have to accept open access to the Internet whether they like it or not – they won’t be able to escape the positive influence the Internet will have on their economies and things will have to open up for this economic growth to continue.
With relation to artificial intelligence, Cerf believes that a defining characteristic of human intelligence if personal experience. Until computers can have an experience (like seeing the sky or feeling the wind or whatever), they will not be able to achieve human intelligence. His example was that of Helen Keller feeling the sign language symbol for water on her hand and then feeling the water itself. The experience of the water is what created her knowledge.
Of course, this could just mean that our robotic overlords have their own experiences unrelated to ours and we remain unable to connect on a fundamental level thus encouraging them to see us as little more than the animals we are. (Can you tell we watched Terminator 3 with our friends Saturday night?)
Cerf has an optimistic view of the future of the Internet as long as it stays open. It is a place that has no boundaries. As long as you can program the software, it can do anything. It is endless. He just worries about the future if attempts to restrict access are successful.
That was about it for this presentation. No real a-ha! moments for me like I would have in the Closing Keynote (I see you shiver with anticipation). But it was interesting nonetheless. Now, off to the parties!