Three Things and A BIG Question

Remember earlier in the year when I was trying to kick-start myself back into my blog writing habit and did the “three things and a question” prompt? Well I’m there again today, though not because I don’t have much to share but more because I have a couple of other things I want to finish up before the week wraps up. So let’s go with this:

Thing 1: Gamestorming – ONLINE!

Gamestorming, by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo, is a book that I bought many years ago and have used often, whether planning a speaking engagement or workshop, a staff meeting, a retreat, or something not even work-related. It is an invaluable resource for finding games that work to solve problems, think creatively, build trust, and more. And I was delighted to recently discover that there is a new(ish) website, Gamestorming, by the same authors that’s filled with exercises and examples and lessons from the book. Now I don’t even have to get up from my desk to walk to my bookshelf – well, except to get those steps in! 🙂

Thing 2: Elsevier Connect Article: What’s next for researchers? Five key trends for librarians

I’m not sure why I didn’t read this article last summer when it came out (or maybe I did and just forgot), but it came across my radar recently and I found it to be a nice, concise overview of the major trends we’re seeing in biomedical research and how health sciences librarians can support them. The trends include preprints and open science, collaboration, AI, funding shifts, and work-life balance. I find it interesting that such a large publisher didn’t talk about publishing shifts, (think transformative and/or read & publish agreements) as something to watch, but maybe that’s in the 2023 newsletter that I missed. And will read next year! But it’s certainly something on the horizon. All to say, if you didn’t read this piece last summer either, give it a look. There’s good stuff in it.

Thing 3: The Pudding: This is how rare it is for a hit song to be credited to an all-women writing team

I KNOW that I’ve mentioned The Pudding multiple times in this space, but I can’t help it. It’s one of my favorite things. Data-driven, visual essays – nobody else does them so well. This particular one about women songwriting teams came out earlier in the summer. It fascinated and infuriated me. Also reminded me of my own related, simple data visualization I did several years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Grrrrr!

BIG Question: What good does it do to take away jobs?

Thanks to a last-minute reminder email, I attended a great community chat session this morning sponsored by the Massachusetts Library Systems (MLS) about Artificial Intelligence. I am purposefully out-of-touch with the topic of AI (to a good degree), because I’m just hoping it will go away. It frightens me. Jane Stimpson from MLS was the speaker and she gave a great overview, offered recommendations of interesting and likely useful tools, and in some ways helped me reframe my thinking of AI away from fear and more towards how it can (and already is) a beneficial thing. That said, there’s a lot about it that makes me think that for the gazilliointh time in the history of humanity, we’re rushing ahead with something without taking a moment to learn from our past. Jane described AI in the session by saying, “AI is like the internet in the mid-90s – it was exciting, but we didn’t know where it would go.” Exactly! But we DO know now some of the ways it went (and continues to go) that aren’t particularly great. Will AI follow the same path? I do wonder how it won’t.

But that’s not my question. The session prompted my BIG question as we discussed one of the risks and concerns of AI is its impact on labor. Because it WILL impact labor. And this is my BIG question. “Progress” is so often wrapped up/defined by things that supposedly make our lives easier, yet they make life easier and/or more convenient at the expense of work. Work is an essential aspect of life, of society, of human interaction. It gives people purpose, income, connection, a livelihood (life – live). I just don’t know if it’s always progress that we continually move in a direction that makes human beings irrelevant. I’m pretty certain that my car can go 120 mph or more, but that doesn’t mean I need to drive that fast. It’s dangerous, in more ways than one.

Think on!