Legal Research

Thinking and Acting new

The Keynote speaker at this year's BIALL Conference is David Snowden from Cognitive Edge. I asked David about his Keynote session and some of the challenges facing Librarians.

BB - David the theme for this years conference is "Locks and Keys", do you see safeguarding information but also making information more widely available including via Social sites the biggest challenge for information professionals?

DS -No, its important, but basically the world has shifted and current attempts to manage security are based on compliance and enforcement rather than "habits and rituals". Human beings are not machines, they are social creatures. The major challenge facing the IT or IM profession is to break away from the concept of a human being as an information processor, and realise that our brains evolved as pattern based intelligence that works from very partial datascans Too much of the IT profession has assumed that autism is a desirable universal human quality

...good security is (also) about social processes not about locks and keys. The way in which we capture data and the level of granulairity of that material is important, and social computing shifts us to finely grained material which is of itself less of a security problem

BB - How does it feel to be the Keynote speaker and what do you look forward to most when you speak at a Conference?

DS - Speaking is always fun, you learn from the audience reaction and its where I test out new ideas.

BB - Your session is called "Thinking and Acting new" what will you be covering in this session?

DS- I'll be bringing insights from the natural sciences (something that hasn't really happened for a hundred years to more) to near on the issues. In particular Complexity Theory (the science of uncertainty) and learning form the cognitive sciences. I will be talking about new narrative bnased approaches to capturing knowledge and information "in the field under fire" in the context of civil and criminal law as well as general advice

BB - Do Law Librarians need to change radically to keep up with the changes in social computing?

DS - Yes (but then again so do all other librarians)

BB - What do you see as the next big change that information professionals will have to adapt to?

DS - Each organisation will have a different one. There are few universal ones. However learning how to generate trusted networks, the symbiosis of human and machine search and providing new and radical ways to store what we know accross generations all come to mind.

BB - I've had a quick look at your blog and it looks like you're travelling around the UK quite a lot this summer. Is there anywhere in the UK you haven't been that you would love to visit?

DS - I've been most places, I don't get to Ireland enough and there are many places in Wales from my youth I want to revisit. Cape Wrath I want to walk. I spend more time overseas, and South Africa, Tasmania and New Zealand are where I spend leisure time

BB - Finally if you could attend one session at the Conference, what would it be and why?

DS - No idea - my own obviously! Otherwise I will look around on the day and ask. Written descriptions rarely capture the essnece of an event

Many thanks to David for answering the BIALL Bloggers questions.

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).