Like most people today I spend most of my day interacting with digital technology in some way. Digital mediums are a crucial part of my job, even though most of the physical material I’m working with was created long before the internet and computer became mainstream. This contrast seems reasonable when you look at it from a preservation standpoint – digitization has the potential to allow documents to exist long after paper has deteriorated.
Despite this logic and being a slight technology geek and addict, I found the recent CBC Doc Zone episode Are We Digital Dummies? oddly appealing. The show provided an interesting look at the impact of technology on business, personal interaction, and how we manage technology. The documentary itself wasn’t anything earth shattering. It built upon the studies which show that we are poor multitaskers and the work of Nicolas Carr author of “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Despite the lack of ground breaking conclusions it was nice to see technology placed in a Canadian context and to be exposed to some Canadian technology usage stats. Am I going to change my technology habits as a result of watching it? Most likely not, I am writing about the show in a blog after all…..