Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

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Peter E. Murray

Library technologist, open source advocate, striving to think globally while acting locally

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  • Issue 115: Public and Private Camera Networks

    This Thursday Threads issue explores the growth of surveillance camera networks like license plate readers, highlighting privacy concerns despite their law enforcement benefits. It discusses investigations, security flaws, private networks, AI integration, and artistic controversies.

     Posted on  April 17, 2025
     ·  14 minutes reading time
  • Issue 114: Digital Privacy

    Amazon's cloud mandate for Echo recordings sparks privacy worries. Workplace surveillance tech and the FTC’s findings on social media data collection highlight ongoing security challenges, alongside Fiverr's controversial data access listings.

     Posted on  April 10, 2025
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 113: More on Copyright and Foundational AI Models

    In Thursday Threads this week: key legal cases and corporate actions on using copyrighted materials in AI training, emphasizing growing tensions between creators and tech companies as AI increasingly utilizes large licensed and some pirated datasets.

     Posted on  March 27, 2025
     and last updated March 29, 2025
     ·  12 minutes reading time
  • Issue 112: Odds and Ends in Social Media Research

    This thread of articles reviews social media's role in spreading misinformation and impacting teen mental health, highlighting personal strategies for prevention and a review of how “Community Notes” do and don't help.

     Posted on  March 20, 2025
     ·  10 minutes reading time
  • Issue 111: End-to-end Encryption

    This Thursday Threads explores global security issues, encryption reforms, and tech giants’ countermeasures against quantum threats and AI, reinforcing the crucial role of end-to-end encryption in safeguarding privacy and communication.

     Posted on  March 13, 2025
     ·  10 minutes reading time
  • Issue 110: Research into Generative AI

    Recent research in generative AI highlights impressive capabilities and concerns. Models show harmful behaviors like 'emergent misalignment' and can 'scheme' autonomously. In Minecraft, AI agents mimic human-like social dynamics. However, models struggle with historical accuracy, revealing biases and knowledge gaps. Despite rapid advances, the unclear mechanisms of AI underscore the need for careful study to manage future risks.

     Posted on  March 06, 2025
     ·  9 minutes reading time
  • Issue 109: Generative AI in Libraries

    This week's Thursday Threads is on generative AI in libraries, with projects by OCLC, JSTOR, EBSCO, Clarivate, and ProQuest. OCLC's AI model is removing duplicate WorldCat records. JSTOR and EBSCO explored AI tools for article summaries and research questions. Clarivate's survey highlighted AI as a library priority but noted concerns about skills and budgets. Ed Summers critiqued AI's biases, legal issues, and environmental impact, urging responsible use in libraries.

     Posted on  February 27, 2025
     ·  11 minutes reading time
  • Issue 108: Educational Technology

    I've been in or near higher education for my entire career, so it is probably no surprise that educational technology ranks high on DLTJ topics. Although a lot of my experience is with library technology, that isn't the only part of the ed-tech landscape that I'm interested in. Take, for …

     Posted on  February 20, 2025
     ·  12 minutes reading time
  • Issue 107: A Power Packed Thread of Articles about the Humble Battery

    Batteries are among the technologies that have had a silent, dramatic change over my lifetime. Last week, as I was setting up a blood pressure cuff for my mother, I opened the compartment in the back and realized I needed 4 AA-sized batteries. It was once common for devices to …

     Posted on  February 13, 2025
     ·  13 minutes reading time
  • Issue 106: How much do you know about the credit card industry?

    With millions of digital transactions taking place every day, have you ever wondered about the complex world behind your simple card swipe? In this week's Thursday Threads, we delve into the multi-layer maze that is the credit card industry. Grappling with $130 billion in fees, merchants are the invisible heroes …

     Posted on  February 06, 2025
     ·  13 minutes reading time
  • Issue 105: Facial Recognition

    In this week's Thursday Threads, I'll point to articles on the contentious subject of facial recognition technology. This tech, currently used by law enforcement and various businesses around the world, raises critical ethical and privacy questions. Beyond the instances where facial recognition use has resulted in wrongful apprehensions by law …

     Posted on  January 30, 2025
     ·  12 minutes reading time
  • Issue 104: Long Term Digital Storage

    This week's Thursday Threads looks at digital storage from the past and the future. There are articles about the mechanics of massive data storage systems in tech giants like Google and Amazon, the still existing use of floppy disks in certain industries, and the herculean efforts of digital archivists to …

     Posted on  January 23, 2025
     ·  9 minutes reading time
  • Issue 103: Time Standards

    This week, I'm going to tug on time. This follows the last item in last week's issue of Thursday Threads: The Clock that Made Power Grids Possible. Two years ago, I also published an issue about time, pointing to articles about eliminating the leap second, time standards on the moon …

     Posted on  January 16, 2025
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Issue 102: Electricity Infrastructure

    I'm about halfway through Saul Griffith's 2021 Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, and I find the author makes a compelling point about bringing nearly everything—energy creation, transmission, and use—to a common factor of "electricity" and then optimizing that system. There are many interesting problems …

     Posted on  January 09, 2025
     ·  10 minutes reading time
  • Issue 101: Data Centers

    One of the very first issues of Thursday Threads was on data centers (2011). That issue had articles on a major Amazon Web Services outage, remote data centers powered by renewable energy, and videos about Google's and Meta's data centers. Unfortunately, I've found that the videos are lost to time …

     Posted on  January 02, 2025
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 100: Internet Governance

    Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just over a year old, and shortly after the war started there were calls to cut Russia off from the internet as a punitive action. (See Can the Internet Sanction a Country? Should It?, Thursday Threads issue 89.) A year later now, that discussion has …

     Posted on  March 23, 2023
     and last updated March 22, 2023
     ·  8 minutes reading time
  • Issue 99: Copyright for Generative Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT, DALL·E 2, and the like)

    Cecil Mae Feather, 1929–2023
    This issue is offered in honor of Cecil Mae Thornburg Feather, my mother-in-law. Cecil Mae was a wonderful person. I only knew her a short time as I married into the Feather family, and that time was filled with love and joy. She enjoyed playing …

     Posted on  March 02, 2023
     and last updated March 01, 2023
     ·  11 minutes reading time
  • Issue 98: Time Standards - leap seconds forwards and backwards, moon time, internet time (then and now), and aliens

    Scan of a book page with this quote highlighted: What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not
    Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. The Confessions of St. Augustine. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931, page 267. Translation of the Latin original from circa 397 CE.

    This week we look at time from a few points of view:

    • Eliminating the leap second
    • If adding a second causes problems, imagine removing …
     Posted on  February 02, 2023
     and last updated February 02, 2023
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 97: Again with the AI Chatbots

    The hot technology in the news now is chatbots driven by artificial intelligence. (This specific field of artificial intelligence is "large language models" or LLM). There were two LLM threads in DLTJ Thursday Threads issue 95 and a whole issue six weeks ago (issue 93). I want to promise that …

     Posted on  January 26, 2023
     and last updated January 25, 2023
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 96: Metadata

    Metadata is at the core of what libraries do. ("metadata" is one of the most common tags on this here library technology blog.) We gather information about the resources available to patrons, then massage it and slice it and sort it and display it in ways that help patrons find …

     Posted on  January 19, 2023
     and last updated January 18, 2023
     ·  5 minutes reading time