The History of Future Libraries? Kind of a WTF Moment

There are a great many awesome things that can be found on the Internet, but personally I think that the “Tomes and Talismans” youtube video might be one of my favorites.  Check out the Video and then you can see my comments on it below:

My Comments:

• For starters, as a librarian and avid apocalypse enthusiast let me say that there is something wondrous about librarians preserving all the works of human history in hopes for an eventual return of humanity.  That being said . . .
•  . . . So this “future,” as portrayed in the video, has technology advanced enough to evacuate the population of a damanged and dangerous Earth and yet the librarians still use microfiche?
• and real card catalogs?
• and super lame computer systems with the seemingly sole purpose of explaining the Dewey Decimal System?
• Basically, the writers of this program, were too caught up in their “educational” goals to provide any insight. that in a future with advanced technologies A, B, and C that libraries would probably be much more advanced as well . . . like say, having everything stored in a massive supercomputer thus eliminating the need for the whole episode.
• The acting is pricelessly low quality 80s style on so many levels.  Cracks me up so much.
• Really all around the absurdity of the whole thing is just amazing.  I love that the assumption must have been something like this:
  • “How do we get kids to be interested in libraries and the Dewey Decimal System?”
  • “I hear kids these days like the whole space and science fiction thing!”
  • “Neato!  What if we do an educational program about libraries set in a post-apocalyptic future?”
  • “Yeah, that would be perfect, we are such geniuses . . . let’s also set it 40 years in the future but assume things will be exactly the same in libraries as they are now!”
  • “Right, we are such close-minded douches we would never consider that in nearly a half century nothing would change in library sciences.  Our corporate public broadcasting shallowness for the goal of teaching kids completely outweighs any reasonable plot development or production quality!”
  • “Fuck yeah!  It’s the 80s mutha fucker!”
• Okay, the end there might have been a little unfair/unrealistic, whatever, it’s my fucking blog, I’ll do what I want.

~ by Nathaniel on June 2, 2009.