I'm starting to work on my opening AIIM Conference keynote and thinking about how technology and the nature of what it means to be an information professional have changed and will continue to change— and also reflecting a bit on my 20 years in this crazy industry.
The following is from the lead editorial in AIIM's magazine from the month before I arrived. My oh my. I better be careful. I shudder to think about people dusting off my prognostications 20 years from now. On second thought, do I really think I will care at that point?
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Internet Imaging
Are there any known boundaries to the Internet? In this issue of INFORM, we look at ways to make the Internet more usable, through the application of SGML and its cyberspace offspring, HTML, and through improved versions of Netscape and other high-performance web browsers. We take a look also at advances in multimedia and how sights, sounds, and images will come our way in the seemingly limitless future.
But despite the euphoria of Internet enthusiasts and the hyped-up selling palaver of some web services providers, we remain uncertain as to the long-run substantive benefits the Internet will bring to businesses and to individual users. We have noted the demise of BBSs, preempted by graphically-intensive web sites, and we have listened to the siren singing of marketers who tout the web as the ultimate vehicle for selling both business and consumer products. "Will newspapers, magazines, and other print media fade away?", we wonder, as we all forsake our Lazy Boys and power up our Pentiums.
Maybe. Maybe not. Radio remains an important communications medium despite almost fifty years of television coverage. And paper is still the medium of record for most of us, despite generations of microfilm technology and electronic imaging. What seems to happen as new technologies - new ways of doing things - are introduced is that we enter a period of coexistence – admittedly not always peaceful- between the old and the new. So, if you prefer to linger with your stick shift transmission, you're not likely to find yourself alone on the Interstate.
Like most who have sampled it, we like the Internet. And we think Intranet usage for document management makes eminent good sense. But until the webmeisters persuade us otherwise, we'll hang onto our CDs and floppies, along with the aperture cards and other imaging artifacts that have served our corporate and personal purposes so cost-effectively in the past.
Please remember that you can still write us if you decide to eschew the Internet. E-mail or snail mail, we're going to get the message.
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Yikes!