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Wow. For me, I think today’s lecture was the most incendiary discussions we’ve touched yet. Dan is an excellent lecturer — a true academic — while I agreed with him on almost every point of the lecture, he really found ways to rile me up. This is one of those things where I could spend the next hour writing a long blog post, but in the spirit of too-many-other-things going on (and the fact that I didn’t have my pocket notebook to write down all my heated fleeting response/ideas from the walk from LIS to SC to base that post from,) I’ll table that for now.

I was hot and contested, but I sat on my heels and listened. (Until they started attacking TiVo and Neilsens, which is a sticking point for me and I had to interject.) I wonder if anyone else in the class found themselves wanting to ask, “Are you trying to get under my skin?” Ooooh, I want to go off on 80 minutes of my own lecture, but I’ll cool it. Sort of. Here’s an overview.

The lecture was another one talking about the struggle between information as a public good and as a commodity. The push for marketability of information, at the sacrifice of … well… from Dan’s lecture… everything. I don’t disagree, and the fundamental problem behind libraries trying to be a democratic, open, community-based information source in an environment/economy where information is a hotly traded and lucritive commodity is difficult. Pre-LIS (only 8 months ago,) I was more heavily on the info commodity side. I’m learning more of the social/public good side, and I’m really beginning to appreciate what a difficult chasm this is to straddle. But even if you don’t like the economics of the world, you have to live inside of them.

I guess my core response would be that innovation created by private industries (even when sparked or supported almost entirely off public subsudies) serves the public good AND adds to the profitability of the creator. The Internet is better because of search engines, and search engines are one of the most lucritive e-commerce businesses today. People didn’t buy new information technologies for their companies (and government didn’t buy them from the private industry) because they wanted to spend money, or because they were well marketed (although they probably were.) They bought them because people wanted innovations. There is a public good component that still exists because people wanted to create better products, and people wanted to have them. People were willing to pay a premium for them. People were eager to be paid to invent them.

If there’s a criticism, it’s because we’ve become complaisant to pay the ‘costs’ for this new technology. (There are good examples within the cell phone, banking and travel industries.) I don’t disagree. But the lecture had an overtone of sell-sell-sell and I think the market is more self-regulating in that good ideas will be accepted because they’re what society wants and needs and is willing to pay for. That is more focal than companies creating information products just because they can turn a profit — although many of them jumped on board for that reason, and many of them failed.

That’s one point. My other point is that even if you don’t think a capitalism is the best environment for public and personal good (and I share that opinion — I think our country is way too individualistic and uncaring,) there’s no escaping falling into the prevailing economic model. Even if I think the public library should provide information for free, capitalism says they need to pay their bills just like I do. If I give money to the library to help them with that, (or rather if I have money to be able to do that, it’s because I personally succeeded — boy, what a horrible term: this “American Dream” that iconifies success through personal financial ‘independence’) I am “paying into captalism.” That same capitalism that made me successful helps me distribute my resources to a system that is more socialistic. Base point: Even if you don’t agree with the current economic model, you can’t derail it without having championed it, and then I’m not sure you’d even want to.

*Phew* Okay, well, that’s a start. It’s already longer than I wanted, but I feel a little better after getting that off my chest. Have a good Friday, and go Illini!