Replying to LO29501 --
Dear Jan,
I think many of us has experienced something like our experiences.
>
> Some adformations. I also was - as a student - at the start of the
> "information revolution". I remember how highly efficient and effective
> (female) secretaries - managing a whole faculty for over thirty years with
> a single file cabinet - were replaced by information systems that:
> a. supplied large quantities of paper
> b. the wrong information, too late. Within a year nobody was responsible
> for the quality of the information.
The worst thing is that the female secretaries hve disappeared :-)
No, more seriously. If things happen as you described, that is that within
a year the revolution took place, it possibly wakened some of the
employees. When I left the library I had a small good-bye reception.
During that meeting I read a poem of myself and then I started with the
parable of the boiled frog. (none of the audience knew that parable). I
told them that I was one of the frogs in the slowly heated container and
that I was glad that I was able to recognise the situation and my destiny
if I stayed any longer in the container. Thus I jumped just in time (big
?) out into freedom. I have no idea what mental pictures I have created in
the minds of the audience who are still working in the library (I left it
for their own fantasy).
The thing was for me that this information revolution was slow enough to
become part of it for quite a while. I think that it is very difficult to
sense the effects of a change if you are part of that very change.
Something similar happens now with climate change, which is also a good
analogue of the boiled frog. And there are so many other examples.
Leo Minnigh
--leo minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl>
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