So says a story in the Business section of the Times, and who would want to quarrel with that? But seriously folks, the article has a point in stressing that the rapid changes in the capabilities of mobile, hand-held devices is putting the dominance of traditional giants at risk, to some degree anyway. Some people are see a chance to overthrow the current leaders and open the field to other interests than those now ruling. The move to hand-helds and tablets is obvious; you can’t turn a page in tech lit on any level without encountering another story about some product, device, feature or combination thereof that enhances what people can do with their phones. Why, soon you’ll be able to make a call with them, and actually talk to someone! Whether all this froth will turn into anything is impossible to say. That very phrase ‘turn into anything’ implies a certain maturity and permanence, if I may use that word, which has not been evident in the market so far. In fact, it’s starting to look something like the tech version of Mussolini’s Permanent Revolution. Nothing will last long, not on the scale of institutions like Western Union, or Bell Telephone, or the motion picture studios of the 1920s-1950s. I don’t know if, and how long, a society can endure that. Somethings have to slow down and even stop long enough to be absorbed and their true benefits and limitations worked out. So I wouldn’t dump Google quite yet, but the situation may be changing in ways that other outfits can take advantage of more rapidly than the established ‘empires’. We’ll see.
UTMB Library Link
A weblog prepared by the staff of the Moody Medical Library about trends in scholarly publication, information technology and library service.
