In the Garden of Information Scientist Beasts

Here at True Archives we love hyperbole. By exaggerating the threat from the digital world that the Information Scientists want to create, we hope to at least to raise a few questions regarding its desirability even while admitting our alarmist rhetoric is doing very little about it. Exaggeration, then, leads us to today’s topic: the similarity of Information Scientists to fascists. Read no further if you cannot recognize a tongue in a cheek.

Is there nothing more sinister, more threatening, more scary than a movement dedicated to global domination? A cadre of "superior" thinkers who only want to conquer and control us for our own good? Have we seen this movie before? The answer is “yes,” and take a moment before you click away to the latest Miley Cyrus update allow for a brief comparison of those crazy, goose-stepping goons and the never ending onslaught of the Biblioposers.

1) Fascists have always been concerned about doing away with the “old order” and replacing it with a new system of conformity. Information Scientists also want to do away with the old order, changing our libraries into computer filled Starbucks parlors where books, if they are to be found at all, have been pushed to the periphery.

2) Fascists are obsessed with youth and strength, promoting the symbolic superiority of both in a society. Information Scientists are obsessed with the latest hula hoop of digital technology, including the use of “social media” to create “robust user communities”made up of clueless, slackjawed internet junkies. (Don’t remind me that I am using social media to warn you all about social media; who says I have to be consistent or even make sense on this blog?)

3) Fascists burned books. Information Scientists? Well, let’s be charitable and say they “recycle” books.

Make no mistake about it. The Biblioposers want to pulp your books and make you believe the screens of their Kindles will be just as good or better than ink on paper. Never mind the fact that the electronic text has all the permanence and retrieval veracity as a breath you took yesterday. When it comes to considering the future of the book, you’d best take several deep breaths before putting your trust in a “cloud” of Information Science promises.