Can you imagine Netflix or Amazon, Google or Facebook behaving this way?
This is the difference between having a sense of civic duty and community vs. not. The customer/business relationship is a poor substitute for the real thing, even when they try to foster the trappings of false "community."
there was a time when people considered the idea of an institution having a long and complete list of everything you've read more than creepy, it was terrifying.
As it should be. There are institutions and cohorts of society trying to control access to information and opinion. This has been going on for quite some time. Noam Chomsky co-wrote a book about it in the 80's.
Libraries don't play nearly as much of a role in making sure that people can access information privately as they used to, they've been shoved out of the way, but they were far more principled guardians of it than tech companies
A librarian friend of mine noted that libraries had come into the business of de-facto social work.
This is the difference between having a sense of civic duty and community vs. not. The customer/business relationship is a poor substitute for the real thing, even when they try to foster the trappings of false "community."
there was a time when people considered the idea of an institution having a long and complete list of everything you've read more than creepy, it was terrifying.
As it should be. There are institutions and cohorts of society trying to control access to information and opinion. This has been going on for quite some time. Noam Chomsky co-wrote a book about it in the 80's.
Libraries don't play nearly as much of a role in making sure that people can access information privately as they used to, they've been shoved out of the way, but they were far more principled guardians of it than tech companies
A librarian friend of mine noted that libraries had come into the business of de-facto social work.