The Art Economy

Human society is going through an unprecedented transition for the past hundred years or so, and things are quickly coming to a head. But I suspect that most people haven't really thought about it much. And that's not an accident. To understand what I'm getting at, and how I think we can deal with, I'm going to have to take people through a very quick discussion. So put on your helmet and buckle up your seat belts---because this is going to be high-velocity.

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Image by "Swiggity.Swag.YOLO.Bro", c/o Wiki Commons

This is a graphic representation of way our ecoystem generally operates. Almost all the energy that life uses comes from the sun (we'll ignore the thermal vent guys living off chemical energy.) Everything that dies decomposes (fungi rules!) The base "Primary Producers" are green plants, which harvest all the solar energy that then supports everything above them. For example: maple trees harvest sunlight--->deer eat maple buds--->a bobcat eats the deer--->a cougar eats the bobcat--->a human being eats the cougar. As you can see, each step in the pyramid involves a loss of 90% of the energy.

For most of human history human society operated as something of a analogy to the basic energy pyramid. This isn't an accident, as human society was simply operating by the same rules as every other party of the solar economy---only instead of bobcats eating deer that ate maple trees, we had aristocrats eating wheat, gathered by soldiers and scribes, who took it from peasants.

Ancient Egyption Social Pyramid. Used under the "Fair Use" provision of the
copyright act. Image from Saint Albans Secondary College.

The thing to remember about these two graphics is that they are grotesquely out of proportion to the actual shape of the pyramids. In each of these, the top positions are held by an extremely small percentage of people compared to the bottom ones. This was simply because it took a lot human labour to grow food, which left only a small amount of surplus to feed all the people higher up on the pyramid.

Science and technology have changed all of this. One farmer in Canada can produce a lot more agricultural surplus than any peasant in all of human history. I had a hard time finding a graphic to represent this fact, as there are some complexities. Agricultural production can be measured in terms of production per acre, which has gone up significantly in recent memory. Or in terms of production per man hour, which has gone up even more dramatically. Or, it can be measured in terms of output of energy versus input of energy in terms of oil, fertilizer, etc----which not only hasn't gone up, but in many cases actually declined. (This is an artifact of living in a strange period where fossil fuels were incredibly cheap and used recklessly.) There is also an issue of transitioning from family farms to corporate agriculture, which means that government "silos" end up measuring "agricultural workers" versus "farmers"---which brings "guest workers" versus "Canadian citizens" and all sorts of complexities that confuse people reading statistics.

The best way I found to explain this decline in the base of the pyramid is by showing the following graph. It shows the consolidation of land into bigger and bigger farms owned by smaller and smaller numbers of farmers.

A graph from Statistics Canada showing the decline in the number of farms.
Image used under the Fair Use copyright provision. 

As you can see, the number of Canadian farms has declined from a little under 481,000 from 1961 to 194,000 in 2016. (My family farm was part of this phenomenon---my dad bought out his neighbour, and our neighbour bought out my brother after he inherited from him.) I think you can safely assume that the decline in farmers mirrors a decline in the need for farm labour due to increased mechanization (today there are literally robots that milk cows and self-driving tractors.)

A parallel phenomenon is happening in manufacturing. When I was a teen I built a stereo receiver (which I still use) from a kit. That was because a major fraction of the price of anything electronic was the time people spent soldering the thing together in a factory. This meant that if I was willing to put in the long hours soldiering diodes, transistors, etc, to a circuit board, I could save big bucks. Nowadays all this is done by robots and labour is a trivial cost in the price of a stereo. (Do people still buy stereos? Are they a thing? My amplifier is hooked up to a computer.)

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What this all means is that the foundation of the pyramid is hollowing out. As robots take over our jobs, there are fewer and fewer people in society who are growing the food and making the stuff that everyone else eats or uses.

This should be a great thing for all and sundry. I can tell you from experience that shoveling manure and soldering circuits are not activities I look back upon with fond memories. But unfortunately our society has hopelessly muddled two intrinsically different things: production and distribution. The result is that instead of finding a mechanism to redistribute the wealth created by mechanization, society has instead made heroic efforts to create more jobs for the people made redundant.

Part of this just involves raising people's expectations so they spend more and more money on bigger homes, burning jet fuel flying all over the planet, and, buying more expensive crap that they really don't need. The ecological burden alone would make this a problem. But there are other elements to this effort that make it tragic.

Because society has tied distribution exclusively to employment, great efforts have been made to propagate the notion that in some metaphysical, moral sense, "work" simply as work, has some sort of merit.

My dad, Fred Trump, was the smartest and hardest-working man I ever knew. It's because of him that I learned from my youngest age to respect the dignity of work and the dignity of working people. (Donald Trump. This and all the following come from A.Z. Quotes)

The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and at the foundation, the pre-eminence of family. (Mitt Romney.)

These are quotes from wealthy people who've never really had to work at a poorly paid, dirty, hard, dangerous job their entire lives. Contrast that with this quote from a man who'd worked as a common seaman all over the world before he became a famous novelist.

 They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure. (Herman Melville.)

One of the big problems we face right now is that we are saddled with a cultural "operating system" that no longer makes any sense. It was designed to reconcile most people to doing awful jobs simply because someone had to do them. Now that we are quickly mechanizing all of these "grunt work" jobs, that way of looking at the world is not only no longer necessary, it is positively dangerous. That's because the whole "dignity of work" schtick only works if there actually are jobs to be had that will support you. If there are no jobs at all---or they don't pay enough to keep a roof over your head---all that message does is breed resentment. And that leads to a society with masses of angry people who don't know why their world doesn't make any sense looking for someone to blame. 

Does that sound familiar?

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The problem of the discontinuity between distribution and employment has not been lost on people. That's why so many people are pushing for an extension of financial distribution beyond the Old Age Benefit and the Canada Child Benefit (which are both guaranteed annual income programs---even though most people don't think of them that way.)

I suspect, however, that a lot of people are deeply concerned about the idea of guaranteed annual income because they have bought into the whole idea of "the dignity of work". They fear that people who don't earn their bread "by the sweat of their brow" will be failures as human beings.

One of the key barriers to social change is the problem people have with actually envisioning a different way of doing things. To that end, I will introduce what I see as a better future: the art economy. 

I suppose that I'm a bit of an optimist, but I think that most people have something inside themselves that would grow into something like a vocation---if they didn't have it beaten out of them at an early age. That's why so many folks like to tinker with cars, fix up their own houses, garden, knit, cook, sew quilts, etc. The problem is, however, that no one can make any money off doing that because they can't compete with modern mass production. (That certainly defines describes me writing this blog.)

That's why the only people who can afford to have hand-made, artistic furniture---for example---are the super-rich who can afford to buy from the tiny fraction of people who manage to make a living as cabinet makers. But here's an idea. What if there was a really strong "safety net", one that was so strong that it was actually a "safety floor" that no one was allowed to fall below. Wouldn't that encourage a lot of people to do things that they really love doing---like make a beautiful piece of furniture? or grow amazing vegetables? or sew amazing quilts?

One of the really nice things about good stuff is that it generally survives a very long time. This because it's made well in the first place---solid maple instead of particle board. It's also because people love the stuff, so they take good care of it. And that means that it doesn't get tossed out after a few years. It becomes an "heirloom" that gets passed on through generations. And if you pay more for an heirloom, isn't it cheaper in the long run because you never have to buy another one? And your children inherit it for free? And their kids?

There's an added spin-off, of course. If you aren't building disposable things like crappy dining room sets, then you are putting less stress on the planet. And if you personally are building one very nice piece of furniture that you enjoy working on, then aren't you putting less stress on yourself than if you were in a factory knocking off cheap crap to sell at Walmart?

And if more people were spending their lives being creative---artists, inventors, etc---wouldn't they be less cranky and bitter about the world around them? Maybe that would help our society stop fixating on the supposed slights coming from other people and instead just be content living a peaceful life in harmony with nature.

What an idea!

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Furthermore, I say to you---the climate emergency must be dealt with!

Quick and Dirty RSS Tutorial!

I recently used social media to ask a bunch of my friends whether or not they use RSS feeds to follow sources on the Web. I was kinda shocked to see how many people didn't know what RSS is, or, how to subscribe to a site with it. I'm writing this blog post because I think that this shows a dangerous lack of media literacy among people of good will. This will be the last "quick and dirty" post before a real news item. 

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Walled Gardens and Confirmation Bias

Modern people live in a news-saturated environment. Learning about the world around us is like trying to drink from a fire-hose. Not only is it impossible to read, hear, or, watch everything on the Web---it's impossible to scan everything that the Web publishes everyday and decide what tiny fraction of it we want to read, hear, or, watch. This means that people not only have to be discriminating about what they spend their time consuming, they have to pay attention to what technology they put into place to decide what they are exposed to every day.

Take a look at this screenshots from Google Play News Stand (you can always click on an image to see a larger version):

This is a screenshot of Google Play News Stand,
reproduced under the "Fair Use" copyright provision.

This is an example of an "aggregator websites".  These are websites that are designed to bring together individual stories from a wide variety of websites for you to look at so you don't have to manually search around for them. These sites have the same "drinking from a fire hose" problem as individuals do, so they use computer programs to do the actual search. They use instructions that programmers have included in the coding, preferences from the viewers, and, access to personal information of viewers that has been "scraped" from their use of other Web products (eg:  the Google search engine.)

In the case of the Google News Stand screenshot, pay attention to the first story: "Patrick Brown seeks $8 M in damages from CTV News---", it's important to realize that this story has been selected for me personally. That's because the Google analytics software knows who I am and it has a long data file about me---it knows where I live, what political party I support, what news sources I routinely read, how old I am, where I work, etc. The computer program that is "aggregating" the websites that it puts on the April 23 News Stand page knows that I live in Ontario, am interested in politics, and, often read the Toronto Star on line. That's why the first story I see is the one on Patrick Brown.

There is a big problem that people need to understand about this site. Google News Stand is what is known as a "walled garden". By this, I mean that Google gets to choose what does or doesn't get onto this website. In the Google example, this probably only means that you will only see fairly "middle-of-the-road", general consensus stories. In other words, you probably never see anything on it that you couldn't expect to see on the CBC or read in the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail. So forget about any sort of thought-provoking analysis, investigative articles that use detailed research to oppose "conventional wisdom", or, stories that deal with local issues.

Another way of thinking about this is to say that News Stand is a "filter bubble". When an algorithm sets out to select what stories it thinks you might be interested in, it also creates a situation where you no longer get "surprised" or see stories that you violently disagree with. This means that the opportunities for learning something that might lead to changing your mind about an issue are fewer than if someone else---like an idiosyncratic newspaper editor---was deciding what stories to put in front of you. This is a really dangerous thing for society because most---if not all---people are predisposed to look specifically for evidence the supports their pre-existing assumptions and discount that which undermines them. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias".

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Confirmation Bias

To understand this phenomenon, it is important to realize that there two ways to reason: like a philosopher or a lawyer. A philosopher looks at the evidence and arguments and tries to figure out what is the most likely to be true. She may come up with a hypothesis about what is actually the fact, but this is always provisional---if a new piece of evidence comes forth that invalidates that hypothesis, she will discard the hypothesis and create a new one to explain what is going on. In contrast, a lawyer is not trying to find the truth, he is setting out to win. If he sees a piece of evidence that would lose him the case, he will totally ignore it or try to find some way of discrediting that evidence---such as actively seeking out an "expert" who the lawyer thinks will say that the evidence isn't actually harmful to his client. That's because he doesn't really care about truth, but winning. And a lawyer who don't fight for his clients even when he thinks they are guilty can never expect to get ahead in his profession.

(To be fair to lawyers, our system of justice is based on adversarial battle between prosecution and defense. And this, in turn, is based on the idea that people with limited abilities and insight often have to deal with ambiguous situations where no one really does know who is being honest or not. In such cases, it's better for a lawyer to be forced to do all he can to win rather than make him the judge and jury of his client. But for the purposes of this discussion, the two ways of thinking are relevant. Consider, if you will, if a lawyer in a case ever says "Well you've got me there. I've never thought about it that way. I suppose I'm going to have to rethink what I believe about this." Philosophers actually do say such things in scholarly debate.)

Psychologists have found that the natural tendency of people is to think like lawyers instead of philosophers. That's why people who work in the oil industry discount the evidence of climate change. It's also why it is so hard to get many white people to see the privileges that give them advantages over people of colour. It's also why many men are incapable of understanding the effects of their sexist behaviour on women. Human society is absolutely rife with confirmation bias.

Because confirmation bias is so common, our society has developed mechanisms to limit the number of problems that can come from it. The scientific method is one. Several other examples come from the legal system. For example, when a judge rules that "hearsay evidence" is inadmissible, he is specifically using a rule of discourse to overcome a natural tendency for juries to believe what they want to believe. (Hearsay evidence is evidence that is based on second-hand accounts---eg: "I heard so-and-so say that he did it"---where the person who is supposed to have made the original claim is unavailable for cross-examination.) The key problem with hearsay is that the other lawyer and the judge are not able to bring the original person who is supposed to have said something to the stand and ask them whether a: they actually said what they are reported to have said, and, b: any questions that might show that they were mistaken or lying when they said it. If we allow hearsay into a court of law people can be convicted on the basis of gossip and rumour.

Rules like the ones against hearsay evidence are mechanical in nature and not dependent on any individual person being wise enough to understand their importance and remember to apply them in any specific situations. Lawyers and judges have it pounded into their heads at law school that they cannot use hearsay evidence, and, if a judge makes a decision that was based on hearsay evidence, an appeal judge will have to overturn the decision on appeal. This sort of mechanical, culturally-based rule has been created through trial-and-error because of grotesque miscarriages of justice in the past. If you know what to look for, these sorts of fixes exist throughout our society. Examples include the peer-review process for scientific discovery, police officers reading people their rights when being arrested, the rules governing voting procedures, the requirement that all publicly-traded companies have to have regular audits by chartered accountants, and so on. Unfortunately, it is very rare for human society to predict potential problems when a new situation arises and at that time create the cultural "fix" that protects society from confirmation bias. So instead what usually happens is that some ridiculous or catastrophic situation emerges because of confirmation bias, and then---through trial and error---society eventually creates a cultural "workaround" to deal with it. We are currently facing one of those situation with the creation of aggregator services like Google News Stand. The problem with the algorithms that companies like Google use in their web-based news aggregators is that they have created an invisible, mechanical system that encourages confirmation bias among the people who read them. 

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Lest people think I am making a mountain out of a molehill, take a look at the following screenshot from a web-based aggregator that is a little less "savoury" than Google News Stand.

Yup. Read that caption! This is "The Drudge Report".
Image used under "Fair Use" Copy rite provision. 

This is today's headline from The Drudge Report. This is one of the most influential "conservative" news aggregators in America. (Here is the actual website URL. But be careful, it has a lot of "snaky malware" in the advertisements. I have "Privacy Badger" on my browser to identify and delete  "sketchy" advertisements, and I've never seen so much blank space on a webpage before! Clicking on the screenshot above is perfectly safe. As is looking at the Wikipedia article.)

This too is a walled garden. But unlike Google, the fellow who created and runs this aggregator---Matt Drudge---hasn't got huge data files on everyone

Matt Drudge, from his FaceBook page.
 "Fair Use" copyright provision.

who uses the Web. Nor does he have access to Bond-villain-sized mega computers and armies of genius coders. Instead, he just looks at other websites and finds the most salacious stories that fit his own political agenda. And yet, it appears that his website gets about 3 million "hits" a day. (That number sounds impressive---I'd be happy if The Back-Grounder was getting over 100---but remember that the USA is a nation of 300 million. More to the point, it's important to understand that a large number of most website "hits" are generally done by robots doing Dao-only-knows-what.) That's certainly enough to have a significant influence on society. And there is a body of opinion that Drudge has had a huge effect on more "mainstream" media coverage, if only that of dragging down public discourse. As evidence, it appears that The Drudge Report has been important in spreading "important" news stories" such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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One of the ways to "work around" confirmation bias is to expand the pool of people to talk to about things. Presumably, that way you get exposed to different points of view and that broadens your worldview. That was one of the promises of social media. The theory is that we would pontificate about some sort of issue and one of our FaceBook friends would point out the flaw in the argument and then we'd back down. For example, I recently I got all in a tizzy about a tweet that said that the federal government was attempting to remove some provision in the CRTC mandate that forbids the news media from knowingly spreading false news---but a FaceBook "friend" pointed out that the item was dated in 2011---oops! So this does happen. But unfortunately a lot of people use social media to create their own, special "walled gardens" where they allow only people of like mind. The result is what is known as an "echo chamber".  People in these groups take turns whipping each other into a frenzy about various things. Unfortunately, the result is sometimes someone taking all the rhetoric too seriously and then we have situations like like the guy who took an AR-15 into a Washington pizzeria looking for the children enslaved by the pedaphile sex ring operated by Hillary Clinton.  (This also appears to be what happened with the awful van attack in Toronto, which seems to have been inspired by the on-line "involuntary celibate (incel)" culture that exists on groups like 4chan and Reddit.)

Even if people don't end up drowning in the social media version of a cesspit, there are other issues to consider. Increasing numbers of people get most of their ideas from social media like FaceBook, Twitter, etc. There are several problems with these sources. First of all, these systems have a technological bias against long-form communication. Twitter restricts posts to 280 characters. FaceBook has a very limited editing suite. YouTube's advertising policy discourages posts of more than 15 minutes. The companies do this because their primary goal is to maximize the number of clicks, not the quality of discourse. They get paid by advertisers for the number of times someone logs onto the site, both to maximize the number of ads they see and the amount of information that the company gathers about each view. FaceBook makes a lot more money off people zipping from post to post than they do if someone settles into their chair with a cup of tea and spends a good long time reading something like the Back-Grounder.

What this means in term of content is that the social media business model is based on whatever it takes to get people's momentary attention instead of sustained concentration. This is why FaceBook spends so much of it's time trying to get you to gush over cute cat videos or be outraged about some politician. If they could get away with it, they'd probably be showing short snuff videos too.  (That sounds like an outrageous suggestion, but consider the fact that a few years ago a kid at the local university live-streamed a suicide attempt.) That's because what does best on social media are things that appeal to the more instinctual elements of human consciousness and by-pass higher order reasoning. Mainstream news media has understood this for a long time, hence the adage "if it bleeds, it leads".  (If I remember correctly, one of my first letters to an editor was a complaint about The Mercury printing a salacious photo of a woman in a bikini with a knife at her throat.)

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Introducing RSS Feeds

Knowing that social media is playing games with our access to public information doesn't totally

Nope, not going to happen.
Leonard Nimoy, Fair Use

remove the problem. After all, all human beings still have the lower brain functions and they are still important to our survival. Knowing we are fallible creatures doesn't make us into purely logical beings devoid of emotion. We will still find ourselves being fooled into having an emotional reaction that gets us doing stuff that we wouldn't if we'd had a bit more time to think things through. (After all, how many of us are totally immune to the siren call of advertising?) The only thing we can hope to do is find one of those "workarounds" like the one I discussed dealing with hearsay evidence in courtrooms.

Luckily people far smarter than me have been thinking about

This is the RSS Icon,
look for it on the website.

these issues for a long time. One result of this thinking was the creation of what is known as "Really Simple Syndication software or "RSS".  What this allows people to do is to subscribe (what's what "syndication" means) to those particular blogs that you really want to read. The way to understand this is to think that what you are doing is creating your own, personal newspaper---instead of letting Google analytics or Matt Drudge do it for you. What you do is find the icon on the left on one of the websites you want to follow, copy the relevant info, and then add it to the feeder you have decided to use. (Here are some good instructions about how to use it.) In my own case, I now use a Feeder add-on to my Chrome web-browser. What this does is create a list of websites that shows whether new content has been uploaded to them. When I read these new posts (or listen to new podcasts), they are then marked as "read" and removed from the "new category". If I look at the list of posts and see stuff I don't want to read, I can just click next to it and it becomes "read". And if I see a long list and I don't think I want to see any of them, I can click next to the title of the list, and they are all marked "read". When something new comes along, I see it added to the number under the icon on the top of my browser.

My own personal RSS feed. 

This has several advantages over other options. It is possible to set up a link on a web page that will email new posts to readers. But this clutters up your email and it causes formatting problems so you don't really see exactly what the author really wanted you to see. Secondly, it isn't as easy to glance at a list of website notices in order to decide what you do or do not want to read when they are mixed in with other traffic. In a way, an RSS feed is like when we read an old paper edition of a newspaper---I routinely discarded the "Real Estate" and "Sports" sections and mainly read the first one. You don't want to have to open each individual email from all your web sites to see what's inside. With an RSS feeder I can tell at a glance what I want to read and what I want to discard---just like with the Toronto Star.

People often say "well, I just go back once in a while to look at the pages I like---I don't need to subscribe". That doesn't really happen with most people, though. Instead, they log onto social media,

Aaron Swartz,
one of the "good guys"
image c/o Wiki-Commons

look at cute cat pictures, get angry about that awful politician that they are being told to hate, etc, look at the time, are horrified about how much they've wasted, and, run off to do something else. That's not an accident---very clever, very well-paid people who studied human psychology at university have set up social media sites to get you to do that. In contrast, very idealistic people (if you have the time, read this article about Aaron Swartz, one of the RSS inventors---warning, it has a sad ending) have been trying to push back against this avalanche of corporate greed through things like RSS feeds.

A reader might at this point ask "What's the difference in subscribing to a bunch of RSS feeds and using an aggregator like Google News Stand or The Drudge Report? Aren't they all "walled gardens"?" Yes, they are---but the significant difference is that YOU get to create the walled garden, not some algorithm or an individual with an axe to grind. Moreover, the decision to choose whether or not to subscribe to a site using and RSS feed is both conscious and rational. It requires a moment's reflection, and, uses the cerebral cortex instead of the "reptile brain".  Almost no one consciously decides to subscribe to a feed of never-ending cute kitten memes. And almost no one "instinctively" posts links to long reads. Choosing to use an RSS feed is a choice to refuse to be manipulated by social media. 

Another thing to realize about actively subscribing to a blog through a RSS feed is that you are investing in a "relationship of trust" with the author. Part of the problem with fake news is that a lot of it appears to come from credible sources because the standardized format means that what you see is pretty much the same whether it comes from The New York Times or some teenagers in Macedonia. If you take the time to subscribe and read repeated posts, you have a much, much better chance of learning whether or not the blog can be trusted. This is exactly the same thing as when you find a good trades person and stick to them instead of just choosing the first guy who shows up when you search for "Guelph plumbers". If you get all your info based on what you see on FaceBook you might find the odd nugget of gold---but you are going to find a lot of gravel too. Why not subscribe to the vein of gold instead of hoping for another nugget to come along some time soon?

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Of course, I have a vested interest in getting people to start subscribing to various blogs instead of just cruising social media. I want you to subscribe to the "Back-Grounder". (I also want people to pay me through Patreon too.) But there is a bigger point. Companies like Google and FaceBook are driving the old newspapers into the dirt. If you won't support the Quixotic attempts to get some sort of quality local media off the ground, we won't have any local news coverage at all.

I was at a local get-together the other day and someone said "if delegates don't come to City Council, then the newspapers won't say that so many public presentations were in favour of the proposal". She knows that there are no real "newspapers" in Guelph, but she still made the point reflexively. But the fact is that besides Adam Donaldson and his live twitter feed, there is no good coverage of City Council. And besides "the Guelph Back-Grounder", there's no investigative journalism happening either. So it doesn't really matter how many folks show up at a Council meeting to push for a proposal---simply because almost no one has any way of knowing.

To be honest, this situation really concerns me. It's why I looked into if anyone was serious about replacing "The Mercury" when it was finally taken off life-support. And it's why I decided to start writing this blog when I realized that no, no one was working on a replacement. It's also why I keep asking for support on Patreon. No one is going to to work as a reporter giving Guelph good coverage of things like Council meetings unless we develop the culture of paying for news. And in any social movement there needs to be people who take the first steps. As little as a dollar a month makes a difference. It's a concrete statement that you think local news is important.

Are Public Libraries Still Important?

Synopsis

Libraries have a long history, but public libraries only stretch back to the late 19th century. They came about because the industrial revolution created a need for a new class of scientifically-trained workers. This new class of skilled employees were trained at charitably-funded "Mechanics Institutes", which also tended to include lending libraries. Eventually, these private institutions were taken over by municipal government and run like a public utility. This article argues that a similar demand currently exists to train people in "hands on" skills needed in the emerging "post-industrial" or "information" economy. Moreover, public libraries also serve the added purpose of saving local history. They also help lower income people look for employment and navigate government bureaucracy---both of which are primarily web-based. Finally, libraries serve as a publicly-accessible "third place" which fosters a sense of community.

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It's been about a year since the latest conversation at City Hall about putting a new public library in what is now the downtown Baker Street parking lot. That scheme was stopped cold by the decision of the provincial government to not fund a downtown campus of Conestoga College, which would have anchored the proposed Library/YMCA/College/University proposal. Since people have been arguing the need for a new downtown library for a very long time, I think that readers might be interested in a real investigation of why we have public libraries, whether we still need them, and, if we do, whether or not we need a new one in downtown Guelph.

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Why Do We Have Public Libraries? 

Libraries have existed almost as long as the written word. They existed in the ancient world, probably the most famous of which was the Library of Alexandria. This was an adjunct to the Musaeum of Alexandria which was a royally-sponsored institute of learning---similar to a university---which existed in the Ptolemaic Egypt. (This was the dynasty of Greek rulers who inherited that particular part of the empire established by Alexander the Great.)

Speculative Drawing of Alexandrian Library by O. Von Corven
Public Domain, Wiki-Commons 

Primarily, the Alexandrian Library existed as a "prestige" enterprise that helped advertise the power and glory of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Other libraries existed between the time of the Ptolemies and the modern era, but because books were so expensive, they tended to be rare and restricted to religious institutions like monasteries. With the rise of modern printing technology, modern "lending libraries" were created as something that the merely wealthy could access through subscription. Eventually literacy became more common and printing cheaper yet, and industrialists started supporting something called "Mechanics Institutes" for literate working class people. 

Mechanics Institutes came about through the Industrial Revolution when new technology created a need for an entirely new class of skilled trades people that could not be created through the traditional apprenticeship system. Primarily, these people were what we would call "engineers" who needed to have an education in mathematical analysis and the theoretical properties of materials that couldn't be learned from "hands on" training. Wealthy industrialists saw the need for these new "scientifically-skilled" workers, so they set up informal institutions where intelligent people could be taught these new methods. In addition, these organizations also had lending libraries so people could hone their language skills as well as learn calculus, chemistry, and, other important, practical skills.

Manchester Mechanics Institute Building, 1825
Public Domain Image, Wiki-Commons

Guelph's first lending library was located in a back room behind a store in 1832, and a formal "Farmer's and Mechanic's Institute"---with a lending library---was created in 1850.  Public lending libraries came about because of the need to raise the education level of the general public to be able to adapt to a changing workplace. 

Eventually, the Mechanic's Institutes lending libraries became seen as such an important public good that there was pressure to support them as part of the community infrastructure---just like roads, water mains, sewers, police and fire departments, schools, and so on. To that end, Great Britain passed a "Public Libraries Act" in 1850 that allowed local governments to create and fund lending libraries as a public "utility".  Ontario followed suit in 1882. Guelph Council immediately took advantage of its new powers, and established the Guelph Free Public Library in 1883 by taking over the Farmer's and Mechanic's Institute library and running it for them. In fact, Guelph created a public library in the same year as the much-larger Toronto. In effect, Guelph has been on the fore-front of public libraries from the very beginning of such things.  

Guelph administered this old Mechanic's Institute library for 20 years, but in 1901 the Chairman of the Guelph Library Board wrote to the Carnegie Foundation asking for a grant to build a Carnegie library in the town. This was formally approved in 1902, but due to various local delays, it was not open until 1905, in total the new building cost $24,000. ($4,000 was due to local delays---is this the earliest example of "the Guelph Factor"?)  In today's dollars, this is the equivalent of $640,000, which would have been---and was seen as---an astronomical amount of money for Guelph.

Photo by Charles L. Nelles -  Library and Archives Canada 

The Carnegie library lasted until 1964, when it was demolished to make room for the more modern building that we have today. (I will discuss this more in a future post.)

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What Are the Modern Equivalent of Mechanic's Institutes?

If public libraries first came about because emerging industries needed a new class of educated workers, the question should be raised "Do we still need them?" After all, we now have Universities and Colleges to teach technical subjects. And doesn't the Internet allow people to access technical information that people used to get out of books and magazines? Isn't the Back-Grounder itself an example of why libraries are obsolete?

To answer this question, I think that we need to be very careful framing the question. If we ask "Do we need public repositories of paper books and magazines?", we might be able to answer "Yes, we do. But the demand is decreasing very slightly." But if we ask "Do we need a public space where people can do self-directed learning in order to adapt to a changing world?", I think the answer would be "Yes, we desperately need it." Here are links to three different articles that talk about this point in some depth using research from Britain, the USA, and, Australia.

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Consider the following photo:

The Guelph Public Library 3-D printer---note the little objects
between the keyboard and screen.
Photo by Bill Hulet

That is a three-dimensional (3-D) printer. This technology allows people design an object using Computer Assisted Design (CAD) software, which then can be "printed" into an actual object using the machine on the left. The particular one that the Library has for public use can only print the sort of little toys that are on display with it. (Even this machine can be useful---a friend of mine used it to create a part for a vintage motorcycle he is restoring.) But learning how to use it will help people gain the basic knowledge and skills necessary to move onto larger, more practical types of machines.

To give readers an idea of how useful a 3-D printer can be, consider the following applications.  I have deformed feet and have to wear special orthopedic devices to be able to walk. Right now, this involves having my feet cast in plaster, then molds of my feet are made, which are then sent off to a fabrication lab, where an individual creates the devices by hand---a process that takes weeks to do. With a 3-D printer, my feet could be scanned, the orthodics designed with a CAD program, the software downloaded on a thumb drive, and, I could take it to a local "print shop" to be printed off the same day. Dentures, artificial limbs, and, many other devices can also be made this way. Parts for appliances can also be created this way---instead of sending off to China and waiting months for something to arrive. And, of course, since there is almost no real cost to machine set-up or part storage, with widespread 3-D printing no expensive, complicated machine will need be scrapped because one part broke and there is no longer any way to get a new one. All you would have to do is download the software onto a thumb drive from website, take it to a print shop, and, get it printed.

This technology is not limited to the use of plastics. Through the use of laser sintering technology, metal items can also be printed using 3-D methods.

There are also machines that will print ceramics---and much more exotic materials such as living human tissues! Think a little about 3-D printing and you will realize that this new technology will create as big a revolution in the economy as the steam engine did in the 19th century. And, I would argue, when that revolution comes it will require hordes of people with a wide variety of skill levels---from inventors, through entrepreneurs and machine operators, to people with enough basic knowledge to do customer service---to integrate the new technology into the economy. 

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I've focused on 3-D Printing so I could go into some detail to make my point---and because the Guelph Public Library actually has a printer for public use. What I wanted to emphasize is the continuity of purpose between the original "Guelph Farmer's and Mechanic's Institute" and the current Public Library.  Public libraries still serve that useful purpose of offering a venue where an engaged member of the public can self-educate herself in emerging new technologies. 

Truth be told, there are other things that people use the library for that are so common that people forget how useful that they can be. One example is wifi and a computer pool. The last time I had a problem with my home Internet connection I took my laptop computer into the public library and used the wifi connection to search for information about how to trouble-shoot the problem and come up with a solution. I would have been in a significant "pickle" if I hadn't been able to do that. 

I also remember waiting in line and hearing a woman getting reader service for borrowing CDs on how to learn Spanish. She mentioned that she and her husband are long-haul truck drivers and they were teaching themselves this language while on the road. I have since learned that Spanish is increasingly becoming an informal second official language in the USA, and it is especially useful for truck drivers to learn a working knowledge of this language. French is similarly useful, for obvious reasons. A sustained investigation would no doubt find many, many more examples of how people use the public library for their lively hood. In an information economy the public library is an essential resource for many small businesses.

It is also important to realize that when people say that new technologies are "revolutionary" in the same sense as the steam engine was to the industrial revolution, it is not simply meant that they will change some aspects of the current economic system, but rather that they will turn the current economic system totally upside down and this includes how we use already existing technology too.  3-D printing holds the potential to make centralized, giant factories a thing of the past, as we could see the eventual creation of local "general factories" that have industrial scale printers that can be used to print off individual objects as needed. What does it do to the idea of a national "brand" of something if it is produced at the local 3-D printer instead of a central factory in another city, province, or, country? Of course, we could have large corporations who's job it is to design the items which are then printed off locally. But I suspect that a more likely scenario would involve people using open source alternatives that will be available for free download. Anyone care for a Linux or FreeBSD set of eye-glasses, dishes, or, dustpan? 

This is an important issue to consider. When the Mechanic's Institutes were being created, the new economy of that day wanted people that could be hired by large companies to work at permanent, well-defined jobs. What today's economy wants instead, are independent contractors, consultants, and, entrepeneurs who can learn specific skills necessary for a specific job at a specific time. This is a very different environment---one that is even more dependent on self-learning than the old Industrial Revolution was.

If this seems hard to understand, consider the following project, which is being done using all present-day technology---no 3-D printers or other gee-whiz tech in sight. The key point is that they are all using open-source designs that have been registered with a "Copyleft" agreement and gleaned from best practice all over the world.  

At this point some readers may be thinking "this is all very well, but I am never, ever going to be using any of this stuff.  Moreover, I suspect that the majority of people in the community will never use it either. So why should my tax dollars be used to pay for it?"

The important point to remember is that while you personally may not ever use the public library to learn this sort of thing, this doesn't mean that you will never gain from the work of the people who do use these resources. You may, for example, hire someone to fix your vacuum cleaner who will be able to print off a new part instead of telling you that you need to buy a whole new machine. Or, you may sell something to the fellow who fixes the vacuum cleaner. Economists often inflate the "spin off" benefits that accrue to a community to an absurd level, but the fact of the matter is that no man is an island, and when one person becomes more prosperous this often has "trickle down" benefits for others. And one thing that is for certain, communities that don't adopt new technologies run a huge risk of being "left behind".  Ever heard of something called "the rust belt"?

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The next question is "OK. I see the value of all of this, but this information is available on the Internet. What has it got to do with a library?" Please note that that the key elements here are "self-directed learning" and "collaborative learning". That is to say that people want to learn specific types of skills---like how to run a 3-D printer. This isn't the same sort of book learning one gets in a college course, because the skill set isn't a formal trade. Instead, it is much like picking up a wrench from a tool box. The skill is a specific response to an individual problem. It might be used over and over again. It might grow into a career path. But it might be used just once for a particular job and never used again. If you looked at the above video (and I recommend you do) you will see an information system that show how to build your own home. If you want to do this, you don't need to get a carpenter's papers---but if you don't even know how to hammer a nail, it can still be pretty intimidating. More to the point, if you want to build it quick, you are going to have to hire and co-ordinate help from the community. That requires groups of people learning how to work together without descending into anarchy---and that too is a specific skill set that needs to be learned.

Both of these are "hands on" skills that can't be learned over the Internet. Oddly enough, we've come full circle as a civilization. The old Mechanic's Institutes existed to teach people the theoretical skills that they couldn't learn from the apprentice system. The new ones that we need today will teach us the tactile learning that many people never get a chance to experience in formal education. If people doubt the value of this, I would suggest that they go to the Library at the University of Guelph where huge areas of the building have been set aside to allow students to learn two different skill sets that can only be learned by doing:  working together in a small group, and, peer-to-peer tutoring.

Libraries around the world are working to fill these emerging needs. For example, here's an academic library that connects students with other students that have specific skills that they want to learn, through what they call a "Knowledge Market". And here's another one that has created what they call a "Maker Space" where students can learn "hands-on skills" building things.

Guelph's New "Mechanic's Institutes"

Like other communities, Guelph has a lot of pent up demand for this sort of learning. As a result, it has followed the same path of the old Guelph Farmer's and Mechanic's Institute. That is volunteer-based non-profit groups and funded by subscription and donation have been formed to help people learn new skillls. These include:

The Diyode community workshop is a place for making, 2500 square feet of tools and supplies for wood working, metal working, electronics, prototyping and crafting. Holding it all together is a community of people who like to get their hands dirty, and are always willing to lend a hand to anyone that wants learn something new. 

Diyode is a non-profit organization with a mandate to foster an enthusiasm for DIY, to spread the idea that it’s better to build something than to buy it, and that it is better to fix something than throw it away. (From the Diode website.)

Tool libraries loan specialized tools for both experienced and inexperienced community members who are interested in repair, maintenance and building projects. Local tool libraries reduce the costs of improving and greening neighbourhoods, thereby transforming homes and community spaces into vibrant places that reflect a commitment to sustainability and environmental concern.

Over 100 tool libraries have been established in North America since 1979. As a member of the Guelph Tool Library, members sign-out tools for both their home and community initiatives. Whether you are hanging a picture or renovating a community park, the Tool Library offers a range of equipment for your project as a low-cost, resource sharing and space-saving alternative to purchasing and owning tools. (From the Guelph Tool Library website.)

A Repair Café is an event where people volunteer to try and fix broken items. Stations will be set up in the hall and outside with volunteers offering to fix damaged items or provide advice about next steps. Tables will be set up for repairing jewellery, simple sewing fixes, small appliance repair, and bike repairs. Volunteers from the University of Guelph Bike Club and Transition Guelph will be among the people helping out. (From the Transition Guelph website.)

While it is great that the community has spontaneously created these new institutions from general interest, I think that a case could be made that they serve such an important public good that they should be funded through the commonweal instead of private charity. Just like the Mechanic's Institute libraries were replaced by municipally-funded public libraries, just so these new social institutions probably will only continue and manifest their full potential if we also make them into a public utility. I would suggest that it makes perfect sense for the Public Library to expand it's core purpose to encompass these functions, as it already has an institutional culture that can easily accommodate them.

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Archival Collections

When the Guelph Mercury closed it's doors last year there was a bit of a fuss about where the collection of old issues and photos was going to go. The civic museum stepped-in temporarily but eventually the Library took them over. If they hadn't, it is conceivable that the entire collection could have been destroyed. And with it, a huge part of Guelph history would have disappeared with it. Local library archives are the only real institutional repository that most communities have for retaining their history.

The Internet certainly doesn't save local history. That's because web-based resources are primarily aimed at the wider world rather than local areas. Moreover, the vast majority of information that is more that twenty years old simply has yet to be digitized and saved onto server farms. Somebody has to save the old documents, microfilms, photos, etc, go through them manually, label and organize, select out the most useful and important, create catalogues, etc---and then post it on the web. Moreover, this has to be done according to fixed conventions to ensure that anyone who wants to seek out a specific piece of information will have a hope of actually finding the important piece of information that they are seeking.

The Guelph Public Library Archivist Darcy Hiltz,
photo by Bill Hulet

This is a task that is only really properly done by a skilled professional. In Guelph's case, we have Darcy Hiltz. He is the guy that makes sure that the people of Guelph don't lose the photos and records that allow us to have some feel for the history of the place where we live.

There is a fair amount of stuff already digitized and available on the web through a province-wide system that allows local libraries to upload their information into centralized servers. For example, if you look go to the Guelph Public Library (GPL) website and hover over the "local history" button, a menu drops down that includes a variety of items. Just on a whim, I clicked on "Research Your Home", which took me to "Couling Inventory", which eventually brought me to a PDF that showed me an old photo of my house plus a few pieces of information, including when it was built.

Most people can see the value of saving old historical records in and of itself. But these records can also have a practical value. I can remember, for example, a neighbour who was having problems with the city over parking regulations. In effect, the city was telling him that his gravel parking spot was a new addition and they wanted him to rip out a patio and park there instead. Through research in the library archives, he was able to find old photos that showed a Model "T" Ford parked in the gravel spot and a woman in 1950's clothing hanging laundry where the patio was installed. This showed that the existing state of affairs was not something new, but rather an arrangement that was as old as the house---which made it "legal, non-conforming" in the eyes of the Ontario Municipal Board.


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Library as Community Access Hub

Recently I was at a social event and met a woman who was just recovering from a bad fall where she fractured a couple vertebrates and broke a couple ribs. She had been working for a pizza store but lost the job because of the interruption in work. She was getting to the point where she was contemplating getting a new job, so she was looking. Unfortunately, at that point her laptop gave up the ghost and she said that she was reduced to applying on her cell phone, which was a pain.

This raises an important issue. Access to the Internet is increasingly a necessity for people to look for work, apply for government services, shop, and so on. If you don't have a computer or access to the Web, you really can be a "second class citizen". Libraries are increasingly the entry point for essential services that many people cannot access anywhere else.  One interesting idea that I found while researching this article was a Library in Denmark that understands how important this Internet access feature can be and expanded the concept by bringing together a variety of government services to create a "one stop shopping experience".

The spaceship-like structure houses...  ...a municipal service center for residents and newcomers where citizens can pick up their identification card, renew their passports, and register with the municipality...

Right now the federal, provincial, and, municipal governments all offer services through the post-office, city hall, and, machines in shopping malls. Why not consolidate some of these services and put in a "public service" portal in the Guelph Public Library where people could buy bus tickets, renew their passport, etc?  If the library had the space it could sub-contract with various government agencies to rent them the space for these various service---many of which the Library is already subsidizing by being the only entry point for their web-based services for many low-income people. Indeed, if you think about it, this has always been an important service of public libraries because job ads, public service announcements, etc, used to be an important feature in the news papers that libraries used to provide.

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Library as "Third Place"

Theorists of community sometimes talk about the need for a "Third Place". This is a place besides home and work where people can meet formally or informally to interact with friends, neighbours, and, strangers in a way that builds community. These sorts of places can include barber shops, pool halls, bowling alleys, coffee shops, pubs, etc, but those institutions have their own agendas, which can mitigate against this function. For example, most bars play loud music to discourage conversation---which can slow the rate of alcohol consumption and cut into profits.

The great guru of third place is a sociologist by the name of Ray Oldenburg, who has written two books on the subject:  Celebrating the Third Space, and, The Great Good Place. He defines a third place as having the following characteristics:

• Free or inexpensive
• Food and drink, while not essential, are important
• Highly accessible: proximate for many (walking distance)
• Involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there
• Welcoming and comfortable
• Both new friends and old should be found there.

In a world where people are increasingly isolated into their own little cyber-world, it is tremendously important that our society creates spaces where people can meet face-to-face in an informal, public setting.

Libraries increasingly accept this emerging role and have configured their buildings to meet this challenge. The U of Guelph Library, for example, has a large area on the first floor which is designated as the "Academic Town Square" for informal connections between members of the university community and it has also brought in a Starbucks franchise to also allow people to buy coffee and light meals.

Have a cup of J.O.E. at the GPL!

The Guelph Public Library has also attempted to pursue this mandate through a partnership with J.O.E., a community group that helps developmentally disabled individuals by giving them work experience selling coffee to library patrons. Originally, this was to be a pilot project until the GPL moved to the bigger space on Baker Street, where J.O.E. would have had its own cafe from which they would give a percentage of revenue to the library. That, of course, is now on hold. Hopefully, when the GPL moves to a larger space, it will be able to honour this original commitment.

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Future Stories

As I hope is obvious from the above, I think it is clear that there is still a role for a public library in Guelph. In future articles I hope to discuss some related issues, such as the past controversy surrounding the demolition of the Carnegie library building, the state of the existing building, funding models, the role of the main library versus branches, and so on. Sign up for the RSS feed, twitter, or, FaceBook to keep informed! And if you can afford it, please consider making a donation---either one time through the "donate" button on the upper right hand of the page, or, a monthly micro-payment through the "Patreon" button.