 Alright, good morning everyone and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may give interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week and it is posted afterwards and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archived recordings. Both the live show and the archives are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. On our archives, we do include both the recording of the show and any presentations or handouts or anything that's included. So for example, for today you will have a link to these slides and also as a handout that we'll talk about later too, that you'll have access to, you'll see everything you need to watch it afterwards. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live. The Nebraska Library Commission for those of you who are not from Nebraska is the State Agency for Libraries in Nebraska and this is for all libraries, all types schools, K-12, academic, public, correctional, museums, and anything that's a library, we're the core agency for them. So you'll find things on our shows in our archives that will run in the gamut and anything you could possibly think of. Really, our only criteria is that it is something to do with libraries, something libraries are doing, that's something to think they should be doing, product demos, book review sessions, many training sessions, we're all at the place. But it's great, it's all for libraries. We do bring in guest speakers to come in and talk about different topics from around Nebraska and around the country. But we also have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations and that's what we have this morning. With me today is Amanda Sweet, who is our Technology Innovation Library here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And she's luckily here with us this morning. She's been a little under the weather over the weekend. Yeah, so many people have been going to it, but she's here. She's got her team. And she is going to answer the very important question, what in the world is emerging technology? That's the idea. I know more than I did before. And this is actually the first of a two-part series, I guess we'll talk. Let's say that Amanda is doing, today we're doing what in the world is emerging technology and then in a month on March 13, she's got a follow-up session that goes along with the ethics behind emerging technology. So if you're interested in learning more about that, my tree is signed up for that one as well. It's available on our website right now, if you register for it. But I will hand over to you to answer your questions. What is it? All right, so as you can see on the screen, I'm the Technology Innovation Librarian and one of my job duties is to track emerging technology trends. So probably one of the first and most frequent questions I get is what in the world is emerging technology? And really, there is no across-the-board standard definition. Emerging technology is emerging because one, we're still defining it. The creators are still defining it. And as people are creating new technology, we have to figure out how it fits in our lives, how it fits in our field, how it fits in everywhere. It's not just in libraries, yeah. And that's why the first thing that I'm going to do is talk about what emerging technology is in the world overall. I cannot, will not and can never claim to know all there is about emerging technology because there's just, it's everywhere. And there's going to be more. I mean, right now, there's probably things being invented that are not going to be in this presentation. I have a chart. Awesome, OK. But we'll be in tomorrow, a version of this that you do tomorrow. So I'm going to go over one what it is. I'll go over a few examples of where it lands in different industries because once a general concept of emerging technology shows up in one industry, then over time, people start to look at that and find different applications for it. So I'm not going to go over specific types of emerging technology. I'm going to go over different concepts. So they're just going to be umbrella terms that can be used across the board. And there will not be a specific definition for each one of these things because, one, we're still defining it. And two, as you create definition changes, then we can get a little more into that as we dive into some examples. And then I'll go into what can be currently and actively used in the library right now and some different ways that we're researching technology to be used in the library in the future. And those are techniques that will likely happen. But who's to say? And then what we can do to use the information from this presentation to help identify the needs of our patrons in the future because technology is changing everything right now. All right. So first off, I'm going to start with some different ways to identify what emerging technology is. As I said before, there is no one standard definition. So I read a whole lot of journal articles. I read a whole lot of anecdotal information. And then just the consensus across the board is, we don't know. We're still defining it. But there have been more recently, there have been more research studies to collect, to do general studies to find out defining characteristics. So these are just broad overarching criteria that we can use to find out if technology is advanced enough to have crossed out of emerging and into broad use. Everybody is on board with it and is using it, and it's no longer the new thing in town. Right. And the big thing is that's going to change industry from industry. So we're going to go over blockchain in a little bit. And blockchain is used in the financial industry a lot because it started with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But now they're applying it to health care records and to the library field. But so it's more in use in financials. So it'll be less emerging in the financial industry. But now it's more emerging in health care and in library science. So that would be one example of that. And so top on the list here, we have unseen social ethical concerns. And that would be we don't know, there is no regulation for this technology yet, even for things like social media and for blockchain and artificial intelligence. And pretty much anything that has emerging in front of it, it's building too quickly and being developed too quickly for government regulations and other regulatory authorities to catch up with. So right now the users and the creators are building their own regulation. And then we have to ask ourselves as consumers, can we trust the regulation that was built by the creator? Self regulation is always a slippery step. And so the more we know about this technology and how it works, the more we can look at it and say, this is what I'd like to see out of this technology. This is why it's working. This is why it's not working. And then as libraries, the more information we can give to our patrons, the more they can take control of the information age. And the more they can take a hand in policy building. Because once we have a true understanding of what all of this stuff is, the more we can go to our government agencies and our political agencies and our tech agencies and say, this is working for me. This isn't working for me. This is going to have horrible consequences in society. This is going to have amazing consequences in society. And then this information and this knowledge is our power. Yes, I'm going to say empower the people. And next up is limitation to particular countries. And for this one, I'll go back to the example of social media. Right now, social media is not used. And it's not accessible in the same way in every country. So for example, in China, they can't access Facebook in the same way that we can here. And there's different regulation in other countries. And there's different regulation here. Or there's no regulation. And right now, social media is supposed to be our way to interact with each other and interact with other parts of the world and learn more about other parts of the world. And not everyone in the world has access to it. Not everyone in the world has access to the same information. And we'll see that cost at the bottom, that is one of the biggest ways that this emerging technology is expanding the gap. So all this technology, it needs a research and development time. Research and development takes funding. It takes money. It takes talent. It takes effort. It takes time. And I've worked in libraries for my entire life. I've never had time as a librarian. No. And then that was. I think all of us can identify with that. Yeah, I know. And then that's why a lot of this emerging tech is largely seeming to come out of academic libraries, too. Because in a public library mission statement, you never see dive into the great unknown. Like, you see it more in academic libraries, because they're the leading force that's diving in to find out what's going on, keep on top of the trends, and they put the funding toward the research. And then there's also the lack of investigation and research. Investigation and research, we all know, is huge in libraries. But since this technology is still being created, there hasn't been time or hasn't been enough widespread information about a technology that's currently being created for us to be able to go through and do our due diligence to find out if it's working, if it's not working. And there hasn't been enough time that has passed to find out to do a long-term study to find out if any of this is impacting people. I'll go back to the example of social media again here, because we all use it. And it's probably one of the more universal examples. And it's that right now, we're using social media to connect to the world. But we don't know how forming a digital identity is going to impact us over time. We don't know what kind of long-term psychological effects that's going to have connecting with someone over a computer instead of face-to-face. And we don't know what impact that's going to have on relationships. You have social media in terms of friendships. You have social media in terms of online dating. And we don't know what the long-term effect of that is going to be. But more people are going to be trying it. And then in the future, there'll be more studies that will determine the long-term impact. So yes, social media has been around for decades now. But there's still a lot we don't know about. Yeah. People are using it. And people are using it for all those things. But it's not really long enough. I mean, we've got the anecdotal information that people are getting married based on people that you don't mind. And having friendships that they consider are just as strong as an in-person one. It's all about the conversation. But 50 years from now, 100 years, we've got the next generation. And how does that all? There's a lot to do. And I wish I could be around to see how this does all come out. Yeah. I'd love to know, like, in 100 years, how did this all really affect things? Our teenagers are still communicating by emoji. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last tool it covers, the network effect. Technology is only as powerful as the number of people that adopt that technology. So you can have something amazing that's put together that no one adopts, because one, they don't understand it. Or two, it just doesn't seem applicable to them. Or you can have technology that's picked up in an instant. And then is it good? Is it bad? Who's to say? So many failed dot-coms out there that we heard of and used. And you're like, I remember that one. Yeah. And it's not around it. I thought it was great at the time, but it didn't stick. And then once this technology is created, can it stand the test of time? And that's why this emerging technology, there won't be a standard definition for it for a very long time. Because as we can see, this is Gartner's hype cycle. Gartner is one of their leading tech industries that are doing scientific research. And my favorite part of this little chart is the trial of disillusionment. As this company, they go through a year by year and they study different trends and cycles just across industries. They find out what is growing rapidly, what has a lot of hype around it, what's probably just vaporware, which is probably never going to be in creation, and what will actually stand through the test of time. So I'm going to be looking a lot at the trial of disillusionment and the slope of enlightenment later on the second half of that chart to find out what will probably be more applicable to libraries and what will be more low cost currently to be able to use. So this is a chart. That text is probably a little too small for people to read on the screen or just a little blurry. When you get the slides, you'll be able to see what all these were. Yeah. Yeah, get more into it. So this is just for 2018. And I did not count how many are on this chart right now. But there's quite a few, as you can see. So right down in the trial of disillusionment is augmented reality. It's mixed reality. So that is actually going to be one of the major examples of what libraries can use right now, because there's more free apps that are out right now, more people, more companies are trying to get people to adopt their technology. So they made more free resources to bring people in. And there's more tutorials, and of course, Google's all over it because they're Google. And then so you can see those little yellow triangles on there. The chart says that that is going to take more than 10 years for that technology to develop. So autonomous driving cars, like what Elon Musk was working on, it's going to take some time. And that also means that that level of time means that the people that we're teaching in schools right now are soon going to be the ones developing the technology that's on this chart when they get out of school. And that means that our digital literacy efforts and technology efforts, that part of what we're doing is going towards this cycle. Very important to it. And so let's move forward here. I covered a lot about social media, and I chose this slide because it looks like chaos. Because it is. Exactly. So right now, we're tracking, more or less, what currently exists in social media. And then in libraries, we're talking about how to teach it. So I found that what's more important is not how you use one single piece of social media, not how you use Facebook or how you use Pinterest. It's how you connect in general. And if you can build just across the board regulation in your library for the most ethical use for technology, for this social media technology, that is almost better than what you can do for using one at a time. Because in the future, we don't know how many other types of social media there are going to be. Look how quickly these all cropped up. And if we try to tackle them one at a time, we won't spend too much time on the details. And then there's things like looking at this slide and all these icons. For example, right there, center Google+, no longer. They're shutting it down. I've got my email, I think, April or something. There's an official date. So already that one is gone. And they shut it down for consumers, but for businesses. It'll still exist. But then you won't have your patrons coming in and saying, I want to use my Google+, account to connect and talk to someone. So it's just not, it didn't do so well. Certain people, it was the disillusionment, I think it just, that's where it ended. Certain people connected with it and used it and not enough did and just didn't do what people wanted to do really, I guess, is what people thought it would do. And that's actually one of the traits that we have to teach our students and our patrons is failure is inevitable. But Google's not going to stop. Oh, no, Google's going to be right. That's a blip on the radar. And that is probably a little later on. We'll talk about the different personal characteristics that will help people thrive in a world of technology. And thriving in the face of failure is one of them. Because you're going to see startups that rise up and just plummet down. Like they devote years and years of their time and energy. And even on this chart, people are going to devote years and years and years and hours of effort into this. And it may not happen. But odds are pretty good. They'll try something new. Yeah, they'll use that information and that experience for one of the other things. And so I covered a lot of this in my previous examples. So I won't need it right now. So I'm actually just going to skip over this part because I use a lot of these examples already. And there's only so much time in the day. Virtual reality. We did not see this in the trial of disillusionment. But it was in the trial a few years ago. Because virtual reality has actually been around for quite some time. Sure. And it just exploded in popularity recently. So it was right around the time that Facebook picked up Oculus Rift and they bought it for almost $2 billion. And that's right around the time that the virtual reality boom happened. So what is virtual reality for one thing? It is immersing people in a full-on 3D environment. And I've seen it done well and I've seen it done not so well. And one of the biggest things, there is a few different ways that VR is trying to work out the kinks right now. And one is the field of view. If you turn, if you keep your head straight forward and then move your eyes left or right, try to imagine the degree of field of view that you have just normally in everyday life. And it's usually about, if I remember right, it's about 180, between 180 and 210 if you were to turn your head physically. That headset, the Oculus Rift, is about 110 degrees. And that means that your brain is used to getting that degree of rotation. Something's missing. Right. And now your virtual reality is trying to trick people into thinking that they're immersed in another world. You need that. And your brain is like, something's not quite right here. And field of view is not the only thing that VR is trying to work out the kinks of. But that's all I'm going to cover right now, because that's a whole other presentation. Sure. So how is VR still emerging? One, we don't know how addictive virtual reality is going to be. And until we find that out, we won't know what the social and ethical implications of that VR is. And we also, until we find out all the different applications that the different fields find for VR, we also won't know what the ethical implications are. So since this is still in development, our regulation is still in development, and our ethics are still in development. And right now, there is a cheap way to make VR, and there's an expensive way to make VR. Oculus Rift, super expensive. Like if you're using Unity or something like that, there's a cheaper way to do it. And then there's building a team of 20 different people, getting different artists, getting a script writer, getting everything under the sun, and building a team to make this. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes effort. And it still may not work. And then usually, the most successful ones I've seen, they found in a niche environment. And so they've driven straight toward education, or like there's a ChemLab app that has been gaining more popularity, because they use pedagogical practices to build this app. And then they've also used, so when you put this headset on and you're in this virtual reality world, you need something that'll tell you where to turn your head. And you need like an indicator on the screen, whether it's an arrow or whether it's an object that's half on the screen, half off. That tells you, I need to turn here to get more information. So in just that one app, you're incorporating pedagogical practices because it's an educational tool. But then you're also pairing with someone who knows art, and you're pairing someone who knows psychology because you need to know what people look for in the real world to gain more information and what motivates to learn. There's so many things in the real world that you just don't think about that you need to duplicate in something like this. And then you have to know shading techniques and 3D modeling techniques to be able to replicate the real world enough to tell the user whether it's night or day, or if you're in a scary environment, or if you're in a happy, peppy, unicorn environment. And so basically these teams, this technology is getting more complex. And we also have to teach people how to work in partnerships and how to not just think in one field. So in that example of virtual reality, I already talked about education. I talked about psychology, 3D modeling, and there's script writing basically for a good VR game. You have to be able to build a story. No one just wants to walk into a 3D environment and say, well, I'm here now. They won't stay. They won't keep the headset on. And there's a lot more than just those little strains that go into building a really good game or a really good environment. Yeah, some of these game, I mean, this is, a lot of this is very similar to video game development. Yeah, and the ones that do really well have that story. That's not just walk in and kill all the bad guys or kill the aliens or something. Me and Final Fantasy is huge for a reason. RPG, it's a story. Yeah, Gears of War is a game that my husband plays. And it's a first person shooter. It's you're just shooting the aliens and it's military, big buff military men and women and whatnot. But the story behind that, he was literally in tears more than once because of the story just being so heart wrenching of what was happening to the soldiers and the people. And if it wasn't that, it would just be shoot all the aliens and it wouldn't be nearly as, you know, yeah. Yeah, good times. Yes, he enjoyed it though in the end, yes it was. And that's, and you need the same thing. Yeah, it's not, you can't just, you can't just half acid. And what I'm getting at in like what we need to teach in libraries and what we need for 21st century skills, think across the board. Like a lot of this technology was made because people talk to each other. They got inspired by other fields. They got inspired by, if you think about robot design, half of it's animal inspired, animal locomotion and biomechanics, it's- All the creepiest ones are, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or the most awesome. Yes. But moving on. So I already talked about a few ways that VR can be used and how it can be taught. Because in the library, the future information needs are going to be that people are interested in how technology works, but they also, technology can also be used as a teaching tool. It can be used to help library services expand. It can be used to help library buildings improve. It can be used to, it's pretty much everywhere. And it can also, so VR can be used to help improve exposure to your library. So you can build a virtual reality tour. And in the handout, I actually have an example of a Google actually made a new tutorial that will, it's free to use and they have a full on step by step tutorial that'll show you how to take a 360 camera and capture footage of your library and capture footage of their surrounding area. And you'll be able to, you can create a VR tour. Nice. Which is really cool. You've seen lots of those kind of video tours online, but sometimes like the next level. And then one thing to keep in mind when you're building these new virtual reality tools, that headset that he's wearing, that weave, it's more expensive. Yeah, that's indeed the tools. Now you're talking about the costs and the really expensive ones, but there's also the, I think the Google, the cardboard. Yeah, your cell phone and this cardboard contraption, that is the cheapest thing. All you do is you just get the design, take a piece of cardboard, fold it the right way to hold your cell phone and you've made your own. Yeah. You don't even actually need to buy that from the store. There's plans online. No, yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah, find the plan, find a piece of cardboard. And cardboard, so that weave there, that uses a Fresno lens and the Google cardboard uses a MyConvex lens so that when you're looking through those lenses, you're not actually seeing one image. You're seeing two images side by side. Oh. And it uses stereopsis. Like those stereotopic pictures from way back up, yes. The StereoMewer, that was actually the evolution of virtual reality. So those things, you know, they're awesome. And I actually also put a link to the history of virtual reality in the handout. And you can show, like that's also a great way to even just put together a program in the library. Sure, yeah. So you do grab one of those stereo viewers and then grab a Google cardboard and show a picture of how the inside of the cell phone, what that image looks like when you're not looking at it through those Fresno lenses. Well, cardboard uses MyConvex, but and Oculus Rift uses the hybrid Fresno lenses, which is a whole other animal. But I won't go, I'm fascinated with Fresno lenses if you hadn't noticed. So I'm trying not to go on a tangent right now. Yeah, I don't even know what those are. Fresno lenses, it's a, she asked. Quick, as she asked. Just while you're mentioning it, I'm sure other people, everybody, just a short, picky version. So Fresno lenses, it's a series of concentric circles that when you look through the lens, it will converge light inwards. So when you have it one in front of each eye, it converges light inwards and directs your, it merges those two images into a single image. Okay, cool. Quicky version. Yeah. Yeah. And where was I? Okay. So you can use those to build your virtual environment and then you can build your own headset using cardboard and two stick-on MyConvex lenses that you can order and bulk from Amazon for like five bucks. Nice. And so you can show kids how to build their own headset and then how to build their own app. So you can actually have older, Yeah. You can have adults building that. You can build it yourself. Google made it so that high schoolers or even sixth to eighth grade could make that. So you could have older adults or kids making this. I'm a big kid now. And then you can show younger kids how to build the headset. And then one, it doesn't take any of the library. It doesn't have to take any librarian time because you can use library programming to have older kids make it or adults make it and then have the kids make their own headset and then do the tour of your library or the tour of a school or the tour of anything and use that to teach people how it works and then use that to gain exposure to your library and to then you can post this virtual tour on your library website and on different technology forums. Sure. And that's a great way to show that your library is changing for the future and that your library is prepared for the future. And you are who people should go to to learn more about these things. Yeah. And then, so you covered how you can expose library patrons to emerging tech because they would basically be building emerging tech. They wouldn't be coding it from scratch but they would be going through the motions to find out how it's designed and made. And then you can also create other virtual reality environments to, you can even build a virtual reality. Actually, that's better for augmented reality. I'll just skip ahead here. Augmented reality. So in the picture here, you can see someone's holding a tablet. And augmented reality, the apps work by using a camera and sensors to collect information from the environment. So right now that camera is focused on that physical object of that anatomy. And once the app takes in that information and then you can program that app to label different features on it. So right there showing where the right lung is and the left lung and that other labels off the screen. But you're the idea. Yeah. So this is also a, it could be the potential for a vocational training tool or for like, for example, if you think of the different roles in your library that have a lot of revolving doors. So a Shelvers in a lot of cases because they go off to school or they have pages. So you can program an augmented reality app that would be able to, you could hand your Shelver a tablet, they could walk through the library and then they can hold it up over key different areas that you've physically marked in your library and they can learn more information and learn how to do their job differently. And teach them how call numbers work. Yeah, that'd be the hardest thing. Yeah. And then you can use this app for learning through repetition because no one ever learns anything on the first try. It takes a while. So they can take this tablet and instead of going and finding you and asking you, then they can ask the app instead. They can hold up the tablet and say, oh, that's right. The thing I can't remember what it was when they taught it to me last week. Oh, that's what it was. And then when the Shelver does go to ask you questions, you can take note of the questions that they asked and then you can put it back into your app. And Metaverse is actually your free app that you can use to either build a library tour or to build something like this. And that's also in the handout that I put up on there so that you don't have to drop that down. It's on there. And so right now I'm into reality. Yeah, that's my favorite. Yeah. People run into walls doing that. My husband fell down in Scandinavia. Sorry, I didn't mean to share that. Don't tell him, I told you. So speaking of social ethical implications, we don't know how people are going to react when they're fully immersed in this augmented environment. So Pokemon Go is, it's actually an awesome experiment because it uses a set of sensors that are inside your phone to track where your current location is. And it's basically like the same sensors that are used in GPS location. And once the app registers that you've hit a specific location, it pops a Pokemon up on your screen. And then you got to catch them all. And this is how people run into poles, how they walked into traffic, how they walked into places they're probably not supposed to go. So this is how we're finding out the hard way, what the safety and what, how our policy should go in the creation of these augmented reality apps. So when you're showing patrons how to use Pokemon Go, it's an awesome way to find out how augmented reality works. But then after the session, start asking them more questions, ask them what was going on in the world around them when they were staring down at their screen. And how much were you actually able to register in the real world while you were immersed in this mixed reality world? If someone was mugging someone across the street, would they have noticed? And then the other question is, how can they take these concerns and take them to a regulatory agency? How can we as consumers take control of this augmented reality world? How can we take control of how this world is being shaped? Because we're going to be living in this world, we should have some say in what's going on with it. And this isn't just true with augmented reality, it's true with artificial intelligence, it's true with virtual reality and blockchain and everything that we're going to encounter. The more we know, the more we can do to say, remember that network effect? Technology's only as powerful as what gets adopted. If we find out that something isn't safe, no matter how fun it is or how popular it is, we can man together to shut it down. It's not going to stick around. Yeah. And so Pokemon Go, awesome. What's going to happen in five, 10 years? Will it still be there? Will people still be running into polls? Will it have some other, will it have evolved into something new? Yeah. And Pokemon Go may very well say like, oh yeah, that probably wasn't the greatest idea. We're going to tweak this, this and this. And now there's an arrow pointing to the pole. So possibilities. And that is something that you're talking about, having control with, that they have given people, and it makes a good example of them some control. There are places where you have stops and gyms to battle in and certain organizations, locations have said, no, we don't want one at our space, at our location, because too many people are coming here and it's causing problems. So they can reach out to the developers of Pokemon Go and say, please remove us from your system as a official spot to go to. Or the opposite, we want to be added. There is an option to do that. So we do have, and they've started getting some of that control, offering that some of that control, developers of Pokemon, go to people in businesses or libraries who say, we want to bring in people and have an event. So can you make us one of those official spots for people to go to for things and get added to the game? Yeah. Or we just don't take pillows to everyone. Yeah, that's a thought, yeah. And then when you... Invest in bubble wrap, right? And when you're taking your control over all of this emerging tech, when you take one thing away, try to find a safer replacement option. So there's a million and one apps that are out there right now. So if you'd have to tell your patrons, I'm sorry, but we can't use Pokemon Go anymore, find a different one. There could be something else, yeah. Pokemon Go, the main danger point is that you have to move through more of the environment to be able to engage with the app. But there are other apps where you don't have to actually move so much in the environment. If you build your own app in the library and there's that metaverse that I was talking about for virtual reality. I lied, metaverse is actually more for augmented reality. You can trigger a zombie apocalypse in your library. Awesome, yeah, yeah. And you can also trigger... Without the mess, because it's all augmented reality. Yeah, no more cleaner, it's a plus, you know. But so you have control over your own library environment. You know which areas in your library pose the most danger for different age ranges. And you can also control if patrons are going into a certain area of your library. You can even hold an event after hours. And this is a great way for you to know that one, you have control over your environment, over your own environment. And then you also know that if you test it both ways, having your app running during hours and then having people run into other patrons while they're staring at their screen, then you know that that is a policy recommendation that you can make regulatory authorities in the future that apps, like that you can take that the users should have to be able to take control of their environment for this to be a safe app to use. And if you look at, it's ARC, Google, Google again. They made another, they're making best practices for augmented reality. And one of the best practices is for the app developers to make a rule book for users, for how to set up the best environment to use their augmented reality app within. And that's something that Google's already learned because they've been doing it. But we also don't want to just trust the creator. We want to know more, experiment more, learn more, teach more, so we can have control ourselves. And I sort of already gone over how AR can be used with Metaverse making a tour. You can make like an AR tour. You can use AR, you can use augmented reality to show your library, patrons, other parts of the world. There are virtual reality expeditions and there are AR expeditions made by Google to do tours around the world. BBC is making a new app that will let you explore different historical sites and different museum exhibits. Right now they're still in, they're gathering feedback from their users to find out if they want to continue it or if they want to change it or adapt it. And gathering feedback from users is probably one of the best things that app developers can do right now and what you can do as your library too. Find out what people want, find out how it worked for them, find out what they're experimenting with. And a lot of this tech industry is just going to be trying new stuff, breaking it, find out why it broke and try to fix it. That's what's in creating technology, that's what's in using technology and that's what's in creating the regulatory policies that's going to control technology in the future. Speaking of the future, right now there are a lot of academic libraries that are exploring emerging technology and finding out how they can directly apply it to the library. Blockchain is probably one of the bigger ones because San Jose recently had the, they did a one year long experiment and to find out how this technology is being applied and it recently just culminated in a class that I just, so I'm involved in this, come in this organization called Code for Live. Code for Live, yep, you probably know it, yeah. So I signed up for their newsletter and I just got through the news chain that San Jose is putting out their, they built like this little instructional course. It's an informational course that shows people what blockchain is and what their findings are and they put together, it's basically a training session to show librarians how blockchain can be taught and in the library, using the library, how we can provide information to patrons, different things like that. That's what I got from their website when I checked it out and I'm sure there's more to it. I haven't attended the class yet, but stay tuned. And so, generically, what is blockchain? It's a, you can see on the bottom, a secure way to collect and store data. Originally used in Bitcoin, it was made by a, it's either an individual or a group of people because they published their white paper under pseudonym. So we actually have no idea who the person or people are, but that didn't stop us from using it. There was a hesitation to use it because why would we want to use technology from someone who doesn't even want to admit who they are? And that was, that's one of the biggest question marks for blockchain is who are these people and transparency. And transparency in technology is probably one of the most important, awesome things that you can find. And you'll find that more when we get to artificial intelligence. But why is blockchain still emerging? One, we don't really fully know one what it is to how it can be applied. We know that blockchain itself is, you can, it's called blockchain because it's basically a chain of blocks. Each block represents a set of data. And when one block is added, then it's automatically linked on to a next block of related data that's placed into an overall network. Those two blocks are connected by an encryption key. This encryption key is supposed to have really high security. That means that no one is able to hack into it. But I'm pretty sure we've heard that before where a company will say, this is the most amazing, unhackable thing that we were just hacked. And so we don't know if these claims are true. I don't have a full understanding of it. I've never fully made blockchain. And even the people who are creating blockchain. Someone will figure out a way to hack it, but it's all like levels of what is, nothing has ever, as far as, I mean, I'm saying something potentially controversial. Nothing is ever gonna be unhackable. I don't think that anybody, it's just like saying the Titanic is an unsinkable ship. Just don't say those things. Cause somebody will do something. You can say it is resistant, the most resistant to, so far. Yeah. Because as we're innovating with technology. Someone's gonna find out some other way. Hackers are innovating too. Yeah. And so we also don't know. So the other part of blockchain is that it's supposed to be decentralized. Right. So it does not, the information does not have to pass through a central authority. In the case of the original use of blockchain, the cryptocurrency, most transactions that you use for a credit card or something like that, it would have to pass through a financial institution. Blockchain doesn't. It actually goes through a network. You can see on that diagram on there, it's actually a network of computers that are synced together that that transaction passes through. It's authorized by a set of algorithms that are made by the developer or developing team that place out a set of criteria that this transaction is placed through to find out one if it's coming from a legitimate source or if you have enough funds for it, if you have, it's their set of criteria. And I don't wanna just use cryptocurrency as an example here because you can also use it for records. For data. It's just any set of data. So, and that's one of the biggest confusion points of blockchain. One of the major examples that people use to teach blockchain is cryptocurrency, but that's not the only application. It's kind of gotten siloed into that because that's how people, most people think about it, but it's just sets of data. It doesn't think of it as cryptocurrency. And your computers and the internet, it's just data. It's just packets of information. So you could use it for anything. And guess who uses data? Totally. But we also don't know how secure this really is. And we don't have any regulation for how these systems are currently set up. So since this is still in creation, we don't know there would need to be a really high level of transparency with the development team. And if libraries were to use this, we would have to know exactly the steps that went into creating the algorithms that set the criteria for how this data is used and find out who has access to this data. And they're supposed to, in order to access the blockchain and to make changes to a blockchain, you're supposed to have an authorization key. But who sets who's going to get this authorization key? If we make a really wide network of blockchain that's used across libraries, like it could be used nationally or globally, but do we want to? And what kind of security risk is this going to have? Who has authorization to access it? Who can change it? Who is measuring, who is tracking the different changes that were made? What kind of metadata is going to go into this? Like it's going to be a cataloger's dream or a cataloger's nightmare. Maybe I put a coin. Yes, cataloging is anyway. Cheer enough. But we don't know the impact this is going to have in any way, shape, or form. And we're just starting to explore it in the library world. And there are open source tools that you can use to find out how blockchain is being used in a corporate environment right now. But one, in order to use that tool, you need to know a whole lot more about blockchain before you can start exploring it. And you're going to break it a lot while you're making it. And that's just a thing of life and technology. But a lot of this explored emerging tech is going to probably get into development and research and development, but it may never get into production. And you also have to think about different corporations that are just looking at their bottom line and that they know that they just sunk a whole lot of money into this research and development. So they may look over a few of the ethical concerns before like without, and they may just kind of gloss those over and just push it into production. Because kind of the catch 22 is that we are not going to know if any of this works until after it's in production. So it's kind of a necessary evil to be able to not have all the answers before something gets pushed out into the world. And then it's there. And that's kind of one of the biggest uncertainty factors that goes into emerging technology right now is that we created stuff that we don't fully understand yet. And the users don't know, the creators don't know, the creators will probably claim to know. That's all still a work in progress. That's the key, yeah. And there's also a huge cost to this research and development. So a lot of libraries are going to be hesitant to implement blockchain because the changeover for the infrastructure to a library is going to be really expensive. Yeah. I mean, it could have the potential to save costs long term, but we don't know. Just like making a switch from one ILS to another one. It's going to be a huge undertaking. But that's the idea is the end result going to be worth that. That's what you look at when you make those kind of changes. Something to keep an eye on. And libraries with emerging technology have not been, they're not that risk, like libraries are risk adverse. And I mean, it's funding. It's all, it's funding. It's time, it's energy. And you have to prioritize where you put your time and energy. And risky emerging technology just isn't top on the bucket list. And I can't blame libraries for that. Like I would probably place a priority over teaching library patrons what emerging technology is, changing collection development so that library patrons can learn more about it and change library patrons to mainly do information blocks about it and to do hands-on activities to find out how to create it at a beginning level rather than using emerging technology in library administration or in your building itself. With the exception of Internet of Things, I would use that now. Yeah. But I don't have a slide for Internet of Things, but if you have a question about it, you know where I am. Artificial intelligence is the biggie here. So artificial intelligence is there, they have multiple applications. There's just different subsets of it. Artificial intelligence manifests itself in different ways, deep learning, machine learning, everything like that. I don't have the time nor the mental energy right now to go into everything with artificial intelligence. So I'm just going to use one main example that will probably impact libraries directly. Artificial intelligence is what powers Google search engine. So the image searches and the regular text searches that you use. If you go to, right now, if you were to go to Google, you were to search for what is artificial intelligence. You could search for what is iced tea and it will pop up, ask yourself a question. How is this information organized? If you look at the right hand side of the screen, you'll see a little box that has one or more immediate recommended results. A lot of times you'll see Wikipedia in that recommended result box. Why is it there? Look at how Wikipedia was created itself. It's all open source, it's powered by the people. And right now, that has become a huge information source. Google's recommending it as a main information source and answer to a lot of different questions. But we as information professionals have to ask ourselves, why? What algorithm went into this artificial intelligence search engine result to pull this up? And which factors go into the creation of this artificial intelligence? So, this search engine is created using a set of, it's a training set. Artificial intelligence learns really similarly to the way that people learn. There's a developer that creates an algorithm that in the long run, this algorithm is opposed to continue to write itself based on the information that it learned. And in order to do that, the developer has to set a series of factors that will show the AI what to look for and what kind of weight and emphasis to put on each different factor. Those fact, the different types of factors and the different weights that are placed on these factors are made by a human. And that in itself has a bias. So, since there's no regulatory authority for how these developers are putting this together and what kind of factors they're using, and we as librarians, we know that it's impossible to eliminate bias, even when we make our own collection development decisions, there's bias. And then this artificial intelligence, once it's had its little weights and factors, then you have to start feeding it data so that it knows what to read to spit out an output. So, for example, if you're building a search engine that's supposed to be able to identify different stop signs, you would have to show this artificial intelligence, the different markers to look for when it's trying to identify a stop sign. So you'd have to say, is this eight-sided? Is this red? Does it have a white outline? Is the stop in white lettering? And then you have to ask yourself, in the real world, what if a stop sign is dirty? What if it's nighttime? What if it's daytime? And then you have to start feeding this artificial intelligence different data. You have to show pictures of stop signs in the daytime, at nighttime, dirty stop signs, snow-covered stop signs. What if a stop sign is partially obstructed? And then I use this example for a reason, because if you think of autonomous cars, how does that car identify a stop sign? How does it know when to stop? It's using artificial intelligence. It's driven by artificial intelligence. So the weights and measures that we're using to build this AI that's creating the search engine that's pulling up images of stop signs, it's not going to be the same, but it'll be similar. And that's why autonomous cars are more than 10 years out because artificial intelligence still doesn't know what a stop sign is 100%. And if a human can't figure out the full-on set of training data that will go into identifying a stop sign, then how will an artificial intelligence that's created by a human know that it's identifying the correct thing and pulling the right data set and outputting the right data? And that's how artificial intelligence is largely being made by right now, but it's not the only way. And now this artificial intelligence is supposed to be creating its own data. And its own algorithms to expand this and say these are the different trends that I've been taught to look for. This is the way that I've been taught. And now can I continue this pattern to continue my own self-learning and education? It works in a similar way that it's an artificial human. And then ask yourself another question. We are trusting the information that is generated by this artificial intelligence. We're trusting it because we trust Google. Can we trust Google? And this artificial intelligence is going to permeate everywhere. And now as information professionals, as librarians, we now have to show people that when you search something in Google, you will get an immediate and easy answer, but is it the right one? And who is the one who created the artificial intelligence? Which factors did they use? And right now an algorithm is a black box. If you read that, the dark secret at the heart of AI is that we really don't know what these machines are doing. They're essentially black boxes that could become an Achilles heel. How do we know the results are fair or unbiased? MIT Tech. So as librarians, one, a lot of us are just wondering what AI is going to do to the information profession. And two, we have to find ways to keep ahead of it because we can't 100% trust AI unless we know what weights and balances and which factors went into the algorithms and the training sets that taught the AI. We don't know which pictures of a stop sign were shown to this artificial intelligence to create it. We don't know if all the different factors were taken into account. And if you, now the next time you see a stop sign, you might think a little bit. But that's true of all information. And what's the authority source? And AI is going to change again. The methodology is going to change as they learn more. And this is going to keep going. So, yeah, but it doesn't have to be. It's, as I said, we can take control of creation of technology too. We use artificial intelligence in everything right now, but does everyone know that we're using it? You know, I think of it that way. Yeah, yeah. We just say, here's this cool new thing that we're using. It's easier to find a recipe for lasagna. I do it too. I mean, I do. Oh, sure. Yeah. And we'll have to start asking these questions. And even if you just pull a group together at the library and do an information session, start getting people talking about it. Find out what people don't understand and find out what people are afraid of. Find out if those fears are legitimate. And is this something that we can take into our own hands? Can we force a regulation for artificial intelligence that will make these developers have transparency? If we refuse to use artificial intelligence that doesn't reveal the trainings that information or the factors and the weights and balances that went into this technology, what can we do? Transparency and technology should walk hand in hand. And if we just blindly trust the product of what came out of this and we start adapting it and we start giving this technology power, what's gonna happen? We'll end up with Skynet. Pretty much. And as you said, the previous slide. Yeah. Yeah. We still have the power to be in control of these things. Yeah, just gotta do it. Yeah. And if you remember that chart, AI is still developing. They will always constantly be trying to find new ways to apply it. And the library is going to apply it too. Later on down the line, there might be a library creative search engine that has transparent weights and values to it that people can trust more than Google that obscures their algorithms in a black box. And I can understand why they as a corporation want to do that because they don't want someone to steal their weights and balances. And they don't want someone to be able to replicate more easily what they're doing. And they've already, Google's already released a portion of what they use for their algorithm, for their image. Their image search, it's called TensorFlow. If you go to TensorFlow, Google started building a, it's a set of tutorials that they put together to teach people what machine learning is and what artificial intelligence is. And I mean, I'm sure Google is just trying to generate more talent and recruit more people. I mean, that could be one of the reasons, but who's to say? But Google prides themselves on transparency. They say, this is what we're doing, we're using your data for this. How many people look at it? The image trust them. Yeah, I mean, people just, it's an easy tool to use, but do we wanna take that for granted? And do we want to just trust that what they tell us is true? And as librarians, we also need to protect ourselves too. And we have to raise awareness of what artificial intelligence is. And we have to raise awareness, we have to show that the library is still the place to go for information. And we also have to show that libraries can do more than just house books. We all know it's true because we do it every day. But what else is out there? I assume this will be more something we'll talk about more in your next session about the ethics. Yeah. And what is our time here? We're about 11.15. Yeah, we're running out of long. Oops, okay. Oh, just right there. So cyber security is going to be continually ongoing and it's going to be used to support the other emerging technology that we just talked about. So I won't talk too much about that, but we also have to teach it in digital literacy. So this entire presentation is culminating in digital literacy. And this is what everyone is working on in libraries across the world. We're preparing our students and our library patrons for 21st century skills. And there was a report out there that said that 67% of jobs won't exist yet. We don't know what they are. We don't know what the technology is going to be. We don't know which jobs technology is going to eliminate and we don't know which jobs technology is going to create. And we just need to know that we have control over what technology is created. And spreading information, gathering the correct information is how we gain that control. And starting conversations in the library and showing that the library is tech friendly and that we can be an authority source on this information as well is where the library of the future is likely going. But since we're a little bit over time there, I'll just say that we'll dive a lot more into this when we go into the ethics behind technology because these questions on here are what patrons need to know. And how can it help me? Why do I care? Why should I care? Pretty much, yeah. And that's nine times out of 10 when I go out to different training events or if I talk to just people anywhere, they say, I don't understand blockchain. I don't understand artificial intelligence. Why do I need to know? I'm never gonna create it. And my answer is always, but you're going to use it. And it's going to shape the future and it's going to shape who we are as a society in technology is going to permeate everything. It already is. It already does. And that, and people need to know how it can impact them in their profession. You have library patrons from around the world coming in and you have library patrons that do everything under the sun. You never know if you're gonna have a biologist walk through the door or a psychologist or something. But if you hold an event and you say, we're going to learn more about technology and we're going to have an open conversation about what this is and what it could mean. You're gonna have a full room. Yeah. That is one of the most important things that you can do in your library. You'll be bringing like a diverse group of people together getting a diverse set of opinions. And that's probably going to be the library of the future. Bring people together, talk about the future. And I'll end it there and just let you know that next month I'll be talking about the ethics behind this more so. Right. Is this the last slide in this position? Okay. Yeah. Great. Have some tea. Okay. So does anybody have any questions that you wanna have anything more explained or any comments? Go ahead and type it in the question section. As we mentioned, we did run a little long today but that's no problem. We go as long as it's needed to get things covered when we're doing these kinds of things. I don't think this is great. Lots of good information, scary information in some cases but things that we do need to be paying attention to, I think. And it's a great overview of what's going on. There is so much going on. It is hard to just, but it's something to be good to be aware of and to look for those different things that you're talking about. They're just the features of that criteria that make something emerging. And keep an eye on it and get involved. Thank you, very informative. Yes. So as I said, we will have the slides available. We'll have the handout available for you when the archive is available. And what I think we'll do now is if we move out of this and over to our website here. There we go. I'm gonna go to our Encompass Live website. If you go to the library commission's webpage and I'll see it at Nebraska.gov or if you just Google, go ahead and type in Encompass Live. So far, if you Google us, search us in your search engine or choice, we're the only thing called that, Encompass Live. So you'll find our website. Our follow-up session for this one, as I said, I hope you join us for that, will be March 13th, right here, Ethics Behind Emerging Technology. So if you wanna continue the conversation that we started here and hear the next part about it, go ahead and register for that. Then we'll have both of those archives up there later. So thank you so much, Amanda, for starting us off on this and we'll see you again next month. And possibly things in the future. Wrote myself a note about Cool for Live, maybe some other things we'll see. But here is our schedule for our upcoming Encompass Live shows. I hope you join us next week when our topic is, obviously you've come back with us for the continuing talking about the emerging technology. But next week we're talking about crafting relevant community partnerships using archives. Amy Schindler and Lorenda Weiss from two of our University of Nebraska campuses here, one in Omaha and Lorenda's in Carney, talking about oral history projects, archives and oral histories and using them to connect with your community. There's a bunch of different oral history projects that both of the campuses have put together and they're gonna talk about those and how they were done and how can you use those to connect more in with your community. So please do sign up and join us for that. And any of our other shows that we have coming up on here, we've got our March and April sessions on here, we have more being added to it. Encompass Live is also on Facebook, if you are a big Facebook user, give us a like over there. There it is. We post reminders. Here's your reminder to log into today's show. When our archives are available, we post on here. No, I don't wanna log in right now. Thank you. There we go. Recording of last week's show. So if you do like to use Facebook, please do give us a like over there. The archive of today's show will be available probably by the end of the day today as long as everything cooperates with me, it goes right here in our archives at the bottom of our upcoming shows. And the most recent ones are the top of the list. So here's the one from last week. This week's will be there. It will have a link to the slides and the Google slides and the handout will be there for you. Everyone who attended this morning and who registered, pre-register for today's show will get a message from me. And then we will post it also to our social media, our Facebook page, Twitter, the usual places. While I'm here, I'll tell you this is our archives for the entire history of Encompass Live. We started the show in January, 2009. So we're 10 years in, we're the 10 years in now. You can search all of our archives or just the most recent 12 months. Please note everything has a date on it though. So do pay attention when you are looking at something in here. Some of our shows are gonna have old information, outdated information, expired websites, services or products don't exist anymore. But we are librarians. This is what we do, we archive things. So we have everything going back in time here. So just pay attention to the date of when something was broadcast live when you are searching our archives. One last thing I do wanna mention to everyone. Let's see this way here. We do have coming up at the end of this month our big talk from Small Libraries Annual Conference. This is the registration for that. But this is our small and rural libraries across the country doing presentations for us. One day free online event and February 22nd. So please do register for that. We have our full schedule up here now and we have presentations from public libraries, from schools, from universities. There is a noontime lightning round with five quick 10 minute sessions happening. So please registration is currently open and it is as I said, always is on the last Friday of February. This is our eighth, I was trying to remember, eighth big talk from Small Libraries session conference. There were previous conferences over here in an archive as well. So sign up for big talk, sign up for Encompass Live and hopefully we'll see you at both of those events. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you for being here with us, Amanda. And we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye. And...