IL05 - Day 1: Lee Rainey (Keynote speaker)

I attended Lee Rainey’s keynote presentation this morning. It was a great presentation! Here’s what he talked about, in a nutshell:

Asked who was blogging his talk in real time - about 6 people raised their hands - much different from even 5 years ago

The more invisible the technology is, the more it impacts users
- ex - the internet is everywhere
- but is getting more invisible

Many dial-up users are dial up by choice. They don’t want more internet in their lives.

What are people doing online?
- email, IM, finance, games, interaction
- chat rooms are being used by fewer and fewer people
- people are communicating in other places online (IM, blogs, etc)

Teenagers and the Internet:
- 12-17 - more connected than ever
- adore IM 3/4’s use it
- 1/2 every day
- many have cell phones - they take pictures and text message
- being present with other peole - physical proximity doesn’t matter as much
- they play with their identities - images for IM, etc.
- they are saturated in media
- 8 out of 10 play online games - grew 52% in 4 years!
- they are media creators - they make and share photos, artwork, blogs, websites, etc.
- fanatic multitaskers
- they see advertising as one more input

Politics:
- 75 million adults used the internet for some type of political-related activity (he counted news as one)
- more important source of news than newspapers, tv, and radio
- internet users don’t just read their own opinions - they read differing viewpoints too. The internet is being used as a door opener

Major Moments for people:
- asked people about internet use during life milestones
- 29 million - pursuing more education or training
- 17 million - helped another person deal with a serious illness
- 7 million - coping with their own illness
- 2 million - marriage help
- divorce too

Other stuff:
- There are public toilets in France with IP addresses (sends “clean me” messages)
- RFID golf balls (so you can find them)
- cell phone as life contraoller - send message to start turkey in the oven, etc.

Continuous partial attention - Scanning alerts for the one best thing to seize upon. This is an enormous behavioral change.

Even more savvy internet users - people still don’t know the difference between paid results and real results, and don’t know when they’ve gone to a new site. Sheesh!

Also mentioned that some corporations have email free fridays (huge sigh in the audience)

IL05
IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005