HackCollege.com

There's a brief but interesting interview in The Chronicle's May 6 "The Wired Campus". The interview is with Kelly Sutton, the co-founder of a student technology blog called Hack College. I thought the following was particularly interesting:

Q. What is the most important way technology has changed student life in recent years?

A. It’s no longer weird to spend a lot of time on the Internet. Students will jokingly admit to spending hours on Facebook. The habits that they’re forming right now will eventually lead to different collaborations that weren’t possible in the past.

Q. What’s the biggest downside of all this student technology?

A. It’s adding a lot of overhead to a student’s life — the time it takes to check all the social networks and online platforms.

I thought this was a pretty good parallel to the changes that we have all been muddling through in librarianship. It's no longer weird to spend a lot of time on the Internet. We're forming habits that are leading to different collaborations that were not possible in the past. It is adding a lot of overhead to keeping up with the rest of our responsibilities in the analog world. (Or is even the digital world an analog experience? Hmm.)