by Branko Popazivanov

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Rather than just urging library patrons to use computers at the Richmond Public Library to get on the Internet, you should also urge library patrons to think in a more critical fashion in regard to computers in general and the Internet in particular.

The key question about computers is not only how we can learn to use computers to gain access to the Net, but also how computers and the Net can end up using us?

By being on-line we can end up wasting large chunks of time in trivial and superficial pursuits, thus rarely accomplishing any worthwhile goal? By being on-line can we avoid having to deal with the intractable and often unsettling reality of the real world by escaping into the glitzy virtual world of the Internet? By spending a lot of time on-line our attention span, ability to think, and ability to concentrate, gradually being degraded by the info-tainment "image byte" presentation of information on the Net?

Following is a list of books, most of which are available in the RPL collection, whose authors attempt to come to grips with these thorny issues of computer use and misuse: The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts; The Cult of Information by Theodore Roszak; Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway by Clifford Stoll.

I hope some of the Richmond Public librarians and library patrons will get off-line long enough to read and to ponder some of these books.

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