David Hockney, iPhone, and the idea of "original" in a digital world

I've been reading Lawrence Weschler's recent article in the NY Review of Books on David Hockney and his use of the iPhone to make digital paintings.

David Hockney's iPhone PassionBy Lawrence Weschler. New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 16.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23176

And listening and viewing the associated podcast and slideshow of Hockney's digital paintings.
http://www.nybooks.com/features/slideshows/hockney/

These are born digital works of art. Hockney makes the pictures on his iPhone and sends them to several friends; they send them on to their friends. Weschler notes that none of these images are "copies." Each is the "original." There is no difference between one or another of these images. Hockney has not made a series (an unlimited series?) No one has applied a process to make copies that introduces any difference between the "original" and the "copy." Although Hockney only made one "copy" of any of his digital paintings, there are simply multiple originals. One and many at once. Original and copy at once. The cognitive dissoance is stimulating and revealing.

I find this interesting in how thoroughly this shows the concepts of "original" and "copy" that we use all the time with art objects and books and such are overthrown by digital production and distribution tools and processes. What new ideas and new words will come to replace "original" and "copy"? What new mental models and thus operational models will we construct to live with multiple originals? What new social arrangements will we make to accomodate ourselves to this radical abundance of information, of art, and of originals?

The 21st Century Academic Library

The Yale Archival Reading Group (YARG) has selected as its next text

Lewis, David W. "A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century," College & Research Libraries 68 (5): 418 434.

http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crljournal/2007/sep/Lewis07.pdf

This is a must read for academic librarians.

Lewis develops a strategy for the next 20 years (more or less) of academic libraries.

Good assumptions and reasonable strategies. However, Lewis doesn't see consolidation of academic libraries as a primary factor in the next couple of decades and continues to think of libraries primarily as physical locations or spaces. Thus he misses the importance of consolidation to libraries as providers of networked information services for teaching, learning & research (and I'd add publication, too.)

As providers of networked information services, there is little reason to be tied to or sub-ordinate to a particular college or university. Individual researchers, students, teachers and writers could draw upon a global information service for their specific needs as a researcher, student, teacher or writer. Of course, campus learning environments would have to be open to such networked information services--but they will have to be to take advantage of the Internet or cloud or world wide computer.

In general, the consequence of consolidation for libraries as providers of networked information services is one big library (probably a for profit advertising supported operation with some non-profit players on the edges) for the Internet. Locally, the academic library would become a museum of the book (and the serial, the map, the manuscript, the archive, the sound recording, the film, etc.); in short, a special collections library with collections that are tied to the library's parent institution.

As I see it, libraries will split into highly consolidated providers of networked information services and local, institution-specific special collections libraries/archives/museums/.

David Weinberger on Abundance at LITA (audio)

http://litablog.org/2009/10/forum-2009-keynote-audio-david-weinberger/

An audio file from David Weinberger's 2009 LITA forum talk on Abundance. I've blogged about Abundance before. I'd rather have a transcript. It's nice to listen, but slow.

Knowledge in an age of abundance

A talk at LITA Forum by David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous.

http://www.al.ala.org/insidescoop/2009/10/05/lita-forum-saturday-keynote-knowledge-in-the-age-of-abundance/

"Citing the Scottish philosopher Andy Clark, Weinberger explained that the internet becomes almost a sort of extension of our mind (scaffolding, he called it) so that we think with our brains and store information elsewhere."

My reaction:

Information abundance (for the affluent or for affluent societies, anyway) does seem to be a primary characteristic of our information economy. Our institutions though are shaped by the past environment that was characterized by information scarcity. Libraries seem a prime example. When information is scarce, then collecting it creates pockets of abundance for specific sets of users in particular places--a city, a university, etc. But when information is abundant, then creating local collections of information (to overcome information's "natural" scarcity) is a waste of time. The environment libraries (and the host institutions of libraries: cities, nations, universities, etc.) thrived within is gone. Libraries and other institutions built for an information economy characterized by scarcity must re-make themselves so they fit an information abundance economy. Libraries--as we have known them--are moot.

One model for libraries that seems to be working in the abundant information economy is the library as museum. The library becomes less information-centric and more artifact-centric. Artifacts may remain scarce, so the scarcity-based model of a library as museum could work for collections of rare, unique or otherwise special materials. But libraries as information-centric institutions are ill-suited for an abundant information economy. Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of this ill-fit is that libraries are primarily _local_ institutions that serve a host organization (city, state, university, etc.) The new organizations that have grown up in the abundant information economy are global: Amazon, Google, etc., and one can see a similar pattern of movement from many small local entities to a few large global entities in other information-centric activities like banking and stock brokerage.

In an age of abundant information, the information-centric organizations we need help us find what we are looking for (search tools like Google,) share what we have found (like blogs and social tools), and use or re-use what we have found (productivity tools designed with the "cloud" in mind.) The traditional infrastructure libraries and similar collection-oriented institutions provide doesn't address the needs of users in an economy of information abundance. It seems likely that the information-centric organizations that emerge to help users navigate and manage and use abundant information will be global organizations that are not subordinate to local host institutions like Sioux City, Iowa, the US Dept. of Labor, Yale University, etc. Its a big change.