The evolution of our digital DNA

By Andy Havens and Tom Storey

Sarah Harris is the poster child for the “Google Generation,” those youngsters brought up in the Internet age.

She was born in 1993, the same year as Mosaic, the first Web browser. Sarah communicates through IM and text messaging, sending more than 1,000 texts per week. She listens to music and watches videos on her MP3 player. She’s on YouTube all the time. She finds places and phone numbers using digital maps.

She uploads content from her cell phone to MySpace: video clips, songs, pictures, messages. She keeps in touch with her friends here. She plans parties and outings here. She tells everyone about herself here—her background, her education, her relationships, her dreams.

She studies, works and plays on the Web. She spends more time online than offline. Or, rather, she does not differentiate between the two.

Welcome to Life 2.0, a new digital lifestyle that is changing our culture and challenging the way we think about ourselves and the world. We’ve moved into a shared space that drives how we work, do research, learn, have fun, meet friends and stay in touch—essentially everything we do. We mix the physical world with the digital world. We use digital tools—PDA, MP3, laptop, cell phone, camera, PC, GPS—to tell our stories and interact. We are connected to one another and to the Web.

While most apparent with today’s 15-year-olds like Sarah—born the year after Sir Tim Berners-Lee released the first set of standards that have evolved into what we call the Web—Life 2.0 increasingly spans demographics. And its impact goes beyond the quantitative—faster travel, more channels, better communications, more convenience.

People are absorbing their digital connections into their DNA.

Beyond perfect copies

Priscilla Caplan, Sarah’s mom and Assistant Director for Digital Library Services at the Florida Center for Library Automation, marvels at her daughter’s digital habits. “She’s so fast at texting it’s just amazing,” Caplan says. “And often it’s with many people at the same time. MySpace is her portal to everything. She is always at the computer, and she has hordes of friends just like her.”

Caplan says that Sarah and her friends all want to work in real time. “They hate things that are ‘asynchronous’ so they don’t do e-mail. When Sarah got an Amazon gift certificate she wouldn’t order CDs because they have to be mailed, but spent the same amount on downloadable MP3s and then burned a CD.

“If you call Sarah, she’ll answer the phone. And of course if call waiting interrupts, she’ll put you on hold and answer the phone. But if you leave her voicemail, she won’t bother to pick it up. Everything has to be right there at that moment.”

So often, when we think of the digital age, it’s easy to focus on the conversion of analog materials into digital formats, such as Google’s mass book digitization project or the change from storing music on vinyl and tape to CDs and MP3s. Characteristics directly related to the “digital-ness” of media—easy, perfect copying and nearly free storage and transmission being the most obvious—are certainly important.

Nonetheless, what may be even more important than the convenience aspects of digitization, though, is that their use has become fundamentally different for consumers. The words, music and images may initially be the same. But in the process of being digitized and shared they, and we, are changed.

Items are cataloged, described, mapped and tracked more closely than we could have imagined ten years ago. One example: tracking numbers are used by UPS to digitally identify and trace every package as it moves through the UPS system to its destination. Log on to the UPS Web site, fill in the tracking number and click ‘Track’. In addition, UPS email tracking is available when the Web isn’t. Tracking information can be automatically returned to your e-mail address.

The flow of information about digital objects is more important to many groups—advertisers, governments, authors, and such—than the content. And when we interact with a digital object, we add to its content. We become part of the bibliography, the liner notes, the audience poll, the reviews, the statistics, the buzz, the flavor.

Our lives are being cataloged. Our culture is being curated. What does it mean for libraries when users create and manipulate vast amounts of data about themselves as they interact with their worlds and the materials they provide?

Unlike previous media evolutions—largely driven by new forces of production—the changes we are seeing now impact us on a personal scale. We use tools that span the globe—but they impact us on the levels of our jobs, families, communities and hobbies. We are adapting to this new digital world, of course. But more importantly, we are changing the world to fit our lives.

Librarians have always dealt with volumes of metadata as a matter of course. Most people, though, don’t think of their lives as being cataloged beyond facts such as phone number, address, social security number, etc. Now, however, users create a wealth of both content and information about themselves; some private, much of it public. Call this new catalog of our digital lives “me-tadata.”

Evidence of digital life

Two billion thumbs up: In 1992, a consumer might have perused The New York Times list or watched Siskel and Ebert to get reviews about upcoming books or films. Now, reviews from the audience itself—sometimes by the thousands—are available online. Services like Amazon.com, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Metacritic.com and more make reviewing a piece of content easy and aggregate the collective opinions of millions.

Life 2.0 factor: We’re talking and listening to each other as well as hearing the opinions of experts.

Where in the world is … everyone: In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan made the NAVSTAR-GPS system available for civilian use, making GPS the only fully functional global navigation system in the world. An application developed specifically for military use has now become an indispensable consumer tool. Recently, the ability of a GPS receiver to tell you where you are has begun to merge with mobile phones and Web applications to provide always-on integration of users’ locations with other kinds of data. GPS applications now provide ways to navigate painlessly, track children and pets, get emergency service and find specific products.

Life 2.0 factor: The ability to know exactly where you are, what you’re near, where others are and how to get where you’re going enables fundamental changes in behavior.

CrackBerry addiction: On May 30, 2004, The New York Times ran an article in which it described how the BlackBerry phone/text/e-mail devices are: “… referred to as ‘CrackBerries’ because of their addictive quality. Philippe Reines, a 34-year-old Democrat who works on Capitol Hill… said he went through severe withdrawal after finding that Martha’s Vineyard lacked BlackBerry reception.” Though the term is used mostly in jest, it is true that “always on” communications change how we stay in touch and with whom. The prevalence of text messaging among younger people has been remarked upon at length. The ability to perform Web searches and other online tasks on mobile devices is combining the “everywhere-ness” of cellular technology with the “everything-ness” of the Web.

Life 2.0 factor: Are our “real life” relationships improved or degraded by being so constantly, ubiquitously connected?

Curating our collections: In 1992, the only institutions with thousands of items in a collection would have been museums, libraries and archives. With the advent of cheap digital photography and photo sharing, today’s average family may have thousands of images in its collection, and may be publishing hundreds of them for public or group-specific consumption.

Life 2.0 factor: Users now have collection development, metadata, curation, archiving and publishing issues in common with libraries, museums and other institutions.

Metadata renaissance: Everywhere we look, the availability of contextual information to improve logistics and efficiency is apparent. Data moves invisibly alongside medical information, worldwide package tracking, and RFID tags on everything from library books to military equipment. In ever more environments, data is attached to items and activities and then looped back to reference still more databases.

Life 2.0 factor: If my public life is the sum of my metadata, who is responsible for “The Book of Me”?

Download some furniture: Fifteen years ago, the idea of having a color printer/scanner/copier in the home would have seemed absurd. Now you can get one at the supermarket for about U.S. $75. The next wave in home production? 3D printing. Also called “fabbing” (short for “fabrication”) or “rapid prototyping,” the technology involves the construction of physical objects from digital designs. Engineering and architectural firms have used the technology since the 1980s to create prototype parts and models on 3D printers costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. But cheaper components and widespread use of CAD/CAM software are now bringing 3D printing to the masses. FabAtHome.org has links to models that cost less than U.S. $4,000, kits and parts lists for building a “fabber” yourself. The RepRap is an open-source 3D printer that can make copies of itself; kits are available from U.K. £345. Sears sells “CompuCarve,” a 3D woodcarving machine for around U.S. $2,000.

Life 2.0 factor: It’s not too difficult to imagine that, within a few years, home fabbing will allow us to design, download, share and “print” jewelry, toys, housewares, mechanical parts and maybe even IKEA-style furniture.

The audience is the content: Cory Doctorow, author and blogger, made a statement on BoingBoing.net about content: “Content isn’t king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you’d choose your friends … Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.” For many amateur creators, that is surely true—the reason you create is to engage in conversation. A high school junior can now blog, Twitter or post YouTube videos and engage in a conversation with people … anywhere.

Life 2.0 factor: The ability for millions to participate in a global conversation in which individual creativity takes a central role is an extraordinary shift in how we think about social interaction.

The Googlegänger phenomenon: As reported in Newsweek in October 2007, the term “Googlegänger” is now being used to refer to a “virtual double” that exists only on the Internet. Someone with your name who may be found when someone Googles you. If that person has engaged in risqué or illegal behavior, there is a chance that searchers will mistake these activities as yours.

Life 2.0 factor: The need to manage our reputation not just in real life, but online, and in the context of others’ overlapping data.

The impact of Life 2.0 on libraries

How can libraries engage with those living the digital life? Joe Janes, Associate Professor, University of Washington iSchool, proposes addressing Life 2.0 the same way a library would treat a new neighborhood or academic department.

“This is new territory but sometimes we get freaked out because we don’t think we know anything about these new digital things,” Janes says. “That’s not librarianship. If a dean called and said there was a new industrial engineering department, or the mayor called and said there was a new neighborhood on the south side, you can bet any librarian worth his or her salt would quickly have a proposal together on how to serve these new areas. We would get together with the new clientele so they understood us and we understood them and try to adapt our services for them.

“The same is true with the digital lifestyle. You have people living in Second Life, in mobile devices, in Facebook or Twitter. How do you find them and be present with them to serve their information needs? Libraries are trying to figure out what to do.”

Janes offers these examples of libraries actively working to engage and serve people in Life 2.0.

• Helsinki City Library. The music branch of this library has a performance stage and digital suites where users rent instruments and record, edit and mix performances—and deposit the result in the library collection. The branch is a vibrant part of the digital music community, Janes says. “The library began with the clientele and what they could do to serve them. The place was packed on a Friday afternoon when I was there.”

• Cornell University Library. LibeCast features audio and video recordings (podcasts and vodcasts) about Cornell University Library and its exhibitions, events, lectures, services and history, offering the world a glimpse of life inside one of the nation’s best research libraries. “Their 90-second YouTube videos, Research Minutes, that explain citations and searching are well-done, thoughtful, thorough and fun,” says Janes.

• Alliance Library System. This library system was among the first to set up a ‘library island’ in Second Life, a virtual world that has more than 10 million users. The library island serves the Second Life community and has a number of monthly discussion groups, talks by authors and exhibits based on the information needs of residents. “With Life 2.0, we need to expand our vision beyond the physical library. Get out of the library–and, stay in the library! You really do have to be somewhere and everywhere, as every library should be. It’s the concept, the idea of the library leaking out of the building. Somewhere and everywhere—in and out, more and better.”

Libraries really are trying to figure out this Life 2.0 generation and modify their systems and services to appeal to them, says Caplan. “Kids who have grown up with the Web are unique, and librarians understand that this is a real change—these kids do show different behaviors than earlier generations, even if we still don’t have a good handle on what they are.”

One feature that Caplan thinks will attract the Google generation into digital libraries is GPS. “We have GPS devices in everything now from cars to dog collars, so if your dog gets loose you can find it. It is easy to determine the coordinates of anything and to mash that up with Google Maps. I think in a few years it will be hard to find a digital collection that isn’t georeferenced, and that is going to enrich the information content enormously. We’ll be able to link information geographically the way we now do topically.”

Janes says each one of us is getting more and more like Sarah and her friends as the digital life continues to unfold and take hold.

“People are embracing digital presences differently and at different levels and paces, but it’s more and more part of who we are,” he says.

This is no longer a choice about how to consume media. It is a new way of living, most obvious in our children, but slowly expanding to encompass all of us.

As Janes says, “We are all leading steadily increasingly digital lives.”

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