reflections

Tomorrow is the last day of the quarter, and it's time for me to reflect a bit about what I learned in this course. Here goes:

• I learned that no matter what, if you put something on the Internet about yourself, make it something you actually want people to know. All people. Potential employers, ex-boyfriends, parents; anybody. If it's there, people will find it.

• Some of the futuristic stuff we were afraid of will never happen. Some of it has already happened. All of those tv shows and movies that portrayed the future (The Jetsons, Back to the Future, etc.) were all right and all wrong. No I don't have a hoverboard or a robot maid, but I do have the Internet.

• Not everything on the Internet is true, especially not Wikipedia.

• Not everything on the Internet is real, especially not Wikipedia contributors.

• The first people figure out to make the Internet profitable are the people that didn't burst in the dot-com bubble.

• People either love or hate Andrew Keen. There is no middle ground.

• I can't think of any profession that cannot have some sort of affiliation with the Internet in the coming years. Not one. That's scary, but hopefully good.

So the future is here, and I studied it, and I wrote about it, and I learned I'll have to shape up and get used to it or there won't be a place for me in the communications field. There will still be a demand for writers and editors, just with slightly augmented skill sets. There will still be a demand for reference librarians and researchers. They will not be replaced by Google. I'm glad I know these things now, before it's too late for me.

I might occasionally still post here if I run across a particularly interesting snippet of new-media info and want to note it somewhere. We'll see! Bye!