Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Perhaps these chattering bots fulfill the role I requested.

Some ten years ago, I wrote about The Round Table of Librarians. Since all the knowledge of the world was on the Internet, we just searched for it with Google et al. and found it. What were we to do, however, if we couldn’t think of the right terms for the great searchers? We would go to a group of experts, talk to them, and they would tell us the correct search terms to find what we wanted.

Now we have the chattering bots. Ask them for advice. Type to them vague notions of things. Viola’. They find stuff.

Have we corrected the situation? Well, I think we have better capabilities in our tools, but no, I don’t think we corrected the situation. I still find great value in a group of people who can provide advice.

There is something good that I cannot quantify in spending time with smart people. Let’s not forget that. Let’s treasure that. This is not a blog post advocating return to the office and stop all telecommuting. Nevertheless, let’s note the value of time well spent.