Creative Communities - BC Library Conference 2015

The world basks in the pale light of an ever-increasing number of glowing rectangles. Billions of lines of software code support their operations and sustain their function.  Invisible telecommunications networks connect devices and people across space and time. It's a wonder the whole thing works at all.   Software and its increasingly pervasive physical presence in the world afford new ways of understanding, connecting, and participating. With these new ways comes the need to re-think and possibly re-configure our spaces, a force that is being acutely felt by libraries large and small.   How has this growing presence of networks and computing changed our concepts of space and place? Given our contemporary technological conditions are ideas like "cyberspace" and "online space" still relevant and productive as guiding metaphors for the design of library services and the fulfillment of libraries' civic mandate?   In this talk, Gordon Ross will introduce models and theories to help librarians understand the relationship between software, space, and our interactions afforded through their presence.