Humans, to varying degrees, handle change with difficulty. As a rule change initiated by an individual is more easily accepted than is change mandated from outside. Adaptability to change decreases with age, although it varies greatly from person to person. Additionally, change is often mitigated as people select only what change they want or are compelled to accept.
I was thus somewhat bemused to read an article this morning in the Wired ffed on how the Chicago State U library had put RFID tags on all their archive materials (books in the reportage, but reportage, especially by techies, of libraries is usually badly flawed) and installed robots to shelve and retrieve the materials.[Link] The article goes on to report that the robots can collect five selected books (the reportage doesn’t mention whether this is five randomly selected books or just an average over all book requests for a period of time) in about 2.5 minutes as compared to ~120 minutes for student aides. It also reports that robots do not engage in sexual intercourse in the stacks.
My immediate reaction to this is “how do they know the robots don’t fool around in the stacks?” Is this some techie brag based on intended expectations as opposed to unintended consequences? Or are there disappointed but honest robot voyeurs in the stacks? And if the latter, are they really robot voyeurs or by preference human voyeurs who will settle for whatever is available?
I am not surprised by the lower efficiency of humans, given the unpleasantness of stack work, and human nature. Indeed, what seems likely unsaid is that the decision to adopt RFID and robots was driven not by the long recovery times – after all, if its an educational library, students’ time has scant price – as demonstrated by the pay scale of student aides. I am generally opposed to closed stacks, which these have to be lest a robot harm something human, but given the pilferage that occurs in educational libraries, I suppose it is unavoidable – although the pilferage can be easily eliminated with the RFID technology. But again, that implies a privacy issue that shuls seem ill able to handle these days. So on this basis, perhaps the robot shelving is also a cost saving measure, given the economic problems besetting the nation’s libraries.
What is not said but is interesting to consider is that once one puts RFID tags on all the collection materials, then one can go beyond the usual taxonomies used for shelving and retrieval. The two most common systems the Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress, both have severe limitations. While they allow some hierarchical variation, they are fundamentally linear systems (they actually have a fractal dimension greater than one but less than 2 and I believe the dimensionality of Library of Congress system is a bit higher than Dewey.) The reason they have to be linear is so that the material (books, etc.) can, in effect, be laid out in a line.
Yes, Virginia, I know that there are rows of shelves in the library you use, but if you think about it, the “books” in the rows in a bookcase, going from left to right and top to bottom, are linearly arranged. And the next bookcase continues, and so forth.
The reason this has to be is so that the materials can be found. Now however, with an RFID tag system, a multidimensional taxonomy can be used and the location of a “book” can be found using an RFID detector. So now, to borrow from the existing taxonomies, if you are interested in where topic A and topic M overlap, you can search for “books” that are cataloged to be in both topics. In techie talk, you can now do “AND” operations as well as “OR” operations.
Or at least you can once someone figures out the taxonomy structure (No Virginia, you don’t just make up taxonomies, they have to be mathematically well founded.) and libraries catalog all of their collections accordingly. Which is why libraries need more money, not less. Or at least part of the reason.
I was also bemused by another Wired article [Link] on the 2006 Foot in Mouth Awards. Sadly, most of the foot in mouth belongs to the short sighted and apparently undereducated reporter. The lead off was the President saying “the Google”. A real subject of derision that totally ignores several aspects of human and organizational behavior.
We have to note that if the reporter doesn’t believe Mr. Gore invented the internet, he at least thinks that Google is a verb. I have to differe with him. Google is a verb in the same misshapen but popular way that “Xerox” is a verb. Also, humans tend to refer to specific things or places with the definite article “the”. In the thinking of most people, web sites are places. They don’t see information as not being material. So just as Washington, DC is “the” capitol, any Google web site is “the” Google. Its a place!
Similarly, the reporter picks on Senator Stevens because Stevens can’t explain latency very well. Of course the reporter apparently doesn’t even know the term. Said paragon of wisdom and knowledge then belittles the CEO of FOX News for being an executive. As if the only and best way to make money is tapping a keyboard?
And then its the CEO of Seagate for saying something realistic that makes all the folks working on IT stuff, including reporters, look like honest sewer workers – which is not too bad an analogy if we map the aroma of hydrocarbons over into morals and ethics. I think Oppenheimer wrestled for a long time with the moral and ethical consequences of building the atomic bomb; it was definietely a dynamic and emergent process. Just like the one going on now ith information technology.
Simple Country Physicist 