I think the “death of printed books” argument is over-indulged. The printed book market is changing, that’s for sure, but it will not ever disappear. Overall, the economy has had more impact on how and when people purchase books, than the electronic book readers are.

I have Kindle DX, and I use it sometimes, but generally, I’d rather have a print book in my hands, and I think this is true of the majority of people. I have friends who have Sony readers, Kindles, and other eBook readers. I have a coworker who reads eBooks on her iPaq organizer, or on her video iPod, or iTouch/iPhone. For every way to read a book, there are multiple options to do so. There is very little difference in eBooks today than there was 10 years ago, to be honest. Up until portable readers were available, people were reading eBooks on their computers, or accessing them on computers at public and college/university libraries.

As a published author, I do not view any of these methods for reading my material as negative. If people are reading my stuff, then the goal has been accomplished. It matters little to me whether they are buying my self-published anthology on Lulu, my print book at Barnes and Noble, reading my blogs online, or downloading my eBook on their Kindle, PC, or other device. In fact, the more ways they have access to my writing, the happier I am going to be. Will the Kindle, or any electronic eBook reader, kill off printed books? Hardly, no more than eBooks, PDF’s, and having access to scanners and Torrent sites have.

What needs to be understood is that the business model is changing, and traditional print sellers need to adjust to those changes and make new opportunities for themselves. Barnes and Noble has done this by linking up with a manufacturer that can provide an eBook reader. They are late in the game to do so, but they have done it.

So think about the last 10 “books” you bought, whether they were electronic or hard copy. Out of my last ten, 2 were on the Kindle, and 8 were hard copy. Three of those hard copies I purchased used at half.com, 2 from the thrift store down the street from my house, and three brand new from Barnes and Noble brick and mortar store. Within the last year, I’ve purchased PDF eBooks online at various sites, as well. My bookshelves are never empty, any more than the hard drive on my computer where I store downloaded eBooks. No matter how I buy a book, an author is getting paid, even by association, and that part is what is most important, in the end.

I have been using Facebook for a couple of years, since my teens signed onto it. It started out that I was just trying to keep an eye on their online activities; I banned them from MySpace because of safety concerns, but Facebook had a few more safety features that a mom could love.

But of course, once I started using it, I ended up with lots of other people on my friends’ list. People that I work with, people that I socialize with, people in my spiritual community, some members of my extended family, the usual suspects. These are all people I know in real life.

An interesting thing that I’ve noticed lately is that my circle of friends intersect. My daughter’s best friend is in the same dance group as a friend of mine, and both are on my friends’ list, and several of my friends are in my spiritual community and also work at companies I interact with. It’s a bit of a small world when it comes to these intersecting circles of friends.

And recently, friends of mine who were a couple are no longer a couple, and one half of the duo is now dating someone else that is within my friends’ circle. So now, a particular post of mine may get responded to by the male half of the ex-couple, the female half of the ex-couple, and the new half of the newly-formed couple. All of these intersections create some incredibly surprising tension. And of course, I’m friends with all of them.

Once you break up with someone, and you delete them from your friends’ list, that is no guarantee that you won’t still hear about them, or hear from them indirectly, through your other friends. As our circles cross and intersect, more and more of these connections get made, whether we like it or not. Privacy settings can help, and you can “hide” posts from certain people, but that doesn’t mean that other person isn’t hearing about you the same way you were/are hearing about them. And this doesn’t necessarily apply to just romantic relationships; it can apply to friendships as well. I myself have been removed from someone’s friends’ list after a falling out, yet I hear all about this person, and see her responses to mutual friends’ posts regularly.

This has created a new world for many of us. BF (Before Facebook) it was easy enough to not have direct or indirect contact with an ex; now, it isn’t even a possibility to lock that person out of your life completely. Breaking up is not only hard, but probably impossible to do completely. And short of deleting your profile and coming up with an alter-ego, there is really no easy answer.

Saying goodbye on Facebook really isn’t goodbye; it’s more like “see you later.”

I have just spent a nightmare six weeks at work while we moved a computer lab and two dozen faculty and staff offices within a building.  Through a seemingly random series of stops and starts, we have finally landed in our new homes, beaten and battered, but not broken.  I have sore knees, sore muscles, and bumps on my head from crawling around under desks.  And as we re-acclimate to our new surroundings, I am realizing that moving computers is never simple.

And my biggest complaint?  Cable management.  Particularly, why are we still having to plug in two power cords for every PC we install?  One for the CPU, one for the monitor.  In this day and age, why have we not reached a place where we can plug in one power cord?  Realigning power was our number one issue during the move; for every PC there had to be at least two free power outlets.  Our safety inspectors do not want us using power strips or surge protectors, but we really have no choice when there is one wall outlet and two computers.  And in reality, the draw on the wall outlet is not significant.  One pc and one monitor, plus maybe a set of speakers, is not really an issue.  So why, oh why, have we not figured out how to power the entire PC including a monitor and speakers, on one power cord?

There was a reason I liked our all-in-one machines from Gateway a few years back.  And why I like my laptop so much:  one cord.  Just one.

My first use of the “Internet” was preparing and submitting payroll through a dialup system when I worked for the state.  It was somewhere around 1985 and I had to wonder how “great” this thing was going to be when it took over an hour to submit a few timesheets into a non-local mainframe.  I was an administrative assistant in those days, and my favorite work tool was my IBM Selectric II typewriter (with correction).

Not too long after that, I got a job at the Red Cross, where there was a computer on every admin assistant’s desk.  By the early 90’s, I was working for a Pharmacy College in their pharmacological database design division, which was funded by pharmaceutical companies in a grant setting.  We created and maintained databases of information related to reactions to medication, as well as studies and data on sales (or lack thereof).  We also maintained a series of bulletin board systems that frequently turned into sex chats.  Those pharmacists…they are a wild bunch!

But those years at the Pharmacy college were what led me to my love of the Internet, and why I still spend an inordinate amount of time there.  In those early days, web pages were being designed, website domains were being purchased (for a lot more money then than they are now), and early development was occurring.  My boss, a rather forward-thinking guy, saw the potential and had us working on web pages in short order.  Those were the days.  Grey background, white or black letters, no images.  Really great reading material – if you wanted to fall asleep!

Ah, how things have changed.  In a few very short years, we now have a system that is used by over a billion people, in all countries on earth.  We watch goofy videos, we share our personal anxieties on social networking sites, we post pictures of our kids or the latest crop of tomatoes on our blogs, and get all the news that is the news from thousands of television/radio/newspaper websites.

Some of us would say that the World Wide Web is in a bit of a crisis these days.  It has grown so fast, and so broadly, that sometimes the technology and legislation haven’t been able to keep up.  Those early days saw explosions of innovation and design and development, completely unfettered by government or regulatory control.  If it was possible with the bandwidth and browser capability, then it could happen.  However, today we are facing more and more regulation, both from the government and from unlikely places like the RIAA, MPAA, ISP’s, and media sources (the AP comes to mind).  The amount of push-back these days is sometimes staggering.  One of the most disconcerting things about the current growth of the Internet is the amount of regulation and “no, you can’t do that” activities.  It is stifling, if not outright killing, innovation in the web space.

It is a mid-life crisis of sorts, and maybe a bit of “going back to the beginning” and removing some of those regulations and controls will open up innovation once again.  After all, haven’t we proven that no matter what obstacles we want to put in place, users and providers will find a way around it?  Is it maybe time to stop worrying about what we need to control, and instead provide the kind of innovative ideas and content people are looking for?  The Internet is not going to die, and it’s not going away either, and no matter how much certain parts of the Internet are despised by certain people, the fact remains that all of this content is popular because of demand from the user side.

The Internet needs a sportscar with the top down, needs to grow out its hair, wear lime-green shorts, and live a little.  That’s what mid-life crises are for.   The Internet is due for its mid-life changes.

One of the more important things I do in my day job is to be sure our clients/customers get what they are expecting.  As an educational institution, our customers are faculty and staff.  They come to us with their needs, and sometimes with their wants, and we, as the IT department, need to be open to their needs and their wants, and provide the solutions they are asking for.

This doesn’t mean they always get what they want, but it does mean that we do our very best not to stand in the way of instruction and academic freedom.  We, as IT people, do not get to choose what the client wants to teach, or have available to them, in the classroom.  Our job is to support their teaching needs.

And that includes putting in software that we may personally not like or prefer.  I have had ongoing push-back from two of my technicians who do not like deploying Firefox in our classroom environments.  There is some cause for their concern, as two of our faculty/student browser-based pieces of software only work with Internet Explorer 7 and not with Firefox.  But in general, Firefox is the preferred browser for most of our students and as much as half our faculty. So the solution is to deploy both Internet Explorer and Firefox.   These two technicians do not like Firefox, and find every excuse to come back to me and tell me why they can’t put it in a particular classroom they are working on, coming up with technical reasons or blatantly personal reasons why they cannot deploy the software.

And they are entitled to their opinion.  But my customer is not me or my technicians.  My customer is the instructor or staff member who needs and/or wants this for their classroom.  We can make recommendations and suggestions, but when it comes down to brass tacks, the word “no” cannot be in our vocabulary.  The customer gets what they ask for, 99.99% of the time.  Our ability to provide what the customer wants is what guarantees our jobs aren’t outsourced to someone who will provide what the customer wants.

Without my customers’ happiness, I don’t have a job.  And I’d rather keep mine right now, all things considered.