Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210

by blatherard • 14 years ago

928 312 14 years ago

Taking a look backwards, Theodore Nelsons "Computer Lib: You can and must understand computers NOW!" takes on a whole new meaning 38 years later. (And is sadly out of print.) The hacker culture that contrasted itself against the IBM priesthood has itself become a priesthood.

We've given a significant portion of the world personal computers. And told almost nobody how to use them.

jph• 14 years ago

Excelllent view from the inside. The problem the article highlights is filling out gov't forms that have moved to the web; these are often just PDF scans.

These gov't forms are often ripe for improvement via improved UX with step-by-step inputs, contextual help, and multi-language capabilities.

54mf• 14 years ago

In my experience, practically anything to do with a government and technology is certain to be a terrible mess. Forms are just the tip of the iceberg; take a look at any interface created to "replace" a paper form. I haven't seen one that looked or functioned like it had been updated in a decade.

philwelch12• 14 years ago

> take a look at any interface created to "replace" a paper form. I haven't seen one that looked or functioned like it had been updated in a decade.

The best example I can think of is tax software, and that's hardly changed in a decade. Sadly, most "replace a paper form" interfaces fall short even of that.

unimpressive6• 14 years ago

"These gov't forms are often ripe for improvement via improved UX with step-by-step inputs, contextual help, and multi-language capabilities."

Sure, and this would undoubtedly relieve a lot of pain points. But the authors intent here goes deeper than just interface. A significant, very non-trivial portion of the population is being left behind by digitalization. These people have no recourse if certain government institutions only handle online forms. Imagine for a second that you have no web experience whatsoever, and you are greeted by the firefox startup screen.

A hard thing to do I know, but as it stands if this is your position it's hard to get out of. Where do you even start? Who can you ask for help in an increasingly competitive solipsistic environment? (Solipsistic, according to my spell check, is not a word, but it's meaning should be obvious to those familiar with solipsism.)

It's hard to imagine the peasants plight when your sitting in the Vatican.

EDIT: Going further, even the people that you wouldn't expect, generation Z, don't really understand computers either. And I'm not sure if they really want to. I mean, sure they can use facebook, but if they ever have "a cool idea" good luck to them figuring out how to express it in digital media. I wonder how many brilliant web startups, game changers, and generally disruptive ideas are trapped in the heads of people who will never get an opportunity to try them out.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

If you are 53 you have had plenty of time over the last ten years to learn to use computers.

As for what I would do if I was operating firefox for the first time? Try. Or ask somebody next to me (or one of those standing in line).

sophacles• 14 years ago

Yeah, but explaining why "But computers are a luxury, we shouldn't subsidize those lazy (epithet) people, they should get a job" is a problem, is an interesting exercise. For some reason, people refuse to accept that if you want someone to get a job, but deny them the means to do so, you are being hypocritical and exposing severe cognitive dissonance (seriously more than once I've had someone straight faced tell me "if they want to be able to get computer to apply for jobs, they should get a job"). Yet a large portion of the people don't seem to be able to follow simple causality chains unfortunately. It is both infuriating and saddening.

benwerd3• 14 years ago

A thousand times this. I find the ultra-libertarian stance that our community sometimes takes to be counter to what web applications have been about. Are we empowering people or aren't we?

Libraries are hugely important knowledge transfer hubs (and, as the MeFi commenter rightly says, community centers). Furthermore, selfishly, for us as builders, they're the only place a lot of people will ever come into contact with the stuff we make. They can't be allowed to die.

The entire California library system was given $12m in state funds in 2008. It's now down to zero. How can we, as a community, help?

xenophanes19• 14 years ago

The libertarian stance is not "there should be no libraries" but more like "if there is a genuine need for libraries, and value in having them (quite plausible), then Government funding is not the best approach to creating them or running them efficiently".

Just because something is good doesn't mean the tax payers should pay for it. There are other options.

If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to voluntarily pay for them?

Or if they are providing value, why don't they make money? Perhaps they could provide some services for free and charge for others. Or profitably provide some services very cheaply.

pavs• 14 years ago

> ust because something is good doesn't mean the tax payers should pay for it. There are other options.

if you remove 'good' with 'useful', and it seems to me that this is exactly what tax payers should pay for. There are tons of useless shit tax money is used for, libraries is not one of them.

benwerd3• 14 years ago

Without wanting to get into a political debate (although I'm happy to do that off-site), I see this as baseline infrastructure: part of the solid platform underlying a healthy economy. I do see it as government's job to provide that.

urbanjunkie8• 14 years ago

> If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to voluntarily pay for them?

Because, in this specific case, the people who most need libraries can often barely afford to pay for food and shelter.

Libraries are such an obvious public good that I will never understand why they're not treated (both in the US and in the UK, and perhaps in other countries), as a basic and absolute necessity.

[edited to add not which I left out in my rush to get my point across]

clintjhill3• 14 years ago

Police, Emergency and Fire departments are all "good" and "provide value" however they are not profitable. Nor do people run out to voluntarily pay for them. And there are a few cases where counties/municipalities created subscription like fees for these to the effect of somebody losing a house to a fire while the fire fighters stood to watch.

This is the core of the problem with "no taxes" - principally it's good on paper. In reality it's more complicated than that.

philwelch12• 14 years ago

Actually, the libertarian stance is closer to "I have an inherent human right not to pay taxes that outweighs the public good of having things like libraries." There's some handwaving about voluntary charity, but if voluntary charity worked, no one would have invented public services to begin with, and the typical libertarian doesn't really care anyway.

afterburner2• 14 years ago

They provide the most service to those unable to afford help. Also, they mostly provide the intangible service of raising peoples' education. That's why they don't make money. People only go to college because they think they're screwed if they don't, but almost nothing else education related has that amount of leverage in the peoples' decision-making.

Retric5• 14 years ago

"if there is a genuine need for ____, and value in having them (quite plausible), then Government funding is not the best approach to creating them or running them efficiently".

The problem with that argument is there is Nothing that get's past it.

People talk about creating wealth like it exists in a vacuum but without the knowledge and resources that comes from living in society You can't create such things. Bill gates would have been completely incapable of creating 99.99999% of his wealth if he had been born a mere 10,000 years ago. That's not to suggest society should the vast majority of your output but giving up 1/3 of your income to keep things running smoothly is in no way unfair. If you really think you would be better off fending for your self without tools or knowledge then feel free to get a lobotomy and move to an island somewhere otherwise you do owe society a great deal.

rayiner• 14 years ago

> Or if they are providing value, why don't they make money?

This question is nonsensical in the context of economic theory.

tptacek9• 14 years ago

It's funny how you can look at one mostly-benign comment that just happens to bring up politics (and mostly as a tangent to the point it wants to make) and see how it drives the whole thread off the rails. Just eyeball the torrent of BS political posturing this set off. I'm not blaming the author or anything; it just seems like a miniaturized version of a problem that hurts the whole site.

moultano• 14 years ago

s/whole site/whole world/

For whatever reason, all politics is now identity politics. Less important than the effectiveness of a policy is whether that policy is threatening to the ideology that accompanies a person's group identity.

It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient supporting evidence" notice how the lack of abstraction makes it impossible to avoid focusing on the issue at hand.

jacoblyles• 14 years ago

I'm an ultra-libertarian because I'm fairly certain that giving more revenue to the CA general fund will result in more money given to pensions of 55-year old state employee retirees, and not useful public services like libraries. The large bureaucracies in this country (CA, NY, and national governments) are incredibly dysfunctional and captured by special interest.

AlexMuir• 14 years ago

I wonder if big, successful tech companies should be dipping into their pockets to fund internet training- not as charity, but as an investment. eBay, Facebook, Netflix and Google, for instance. Between those four, there must easily be an annual $100 in revenue from having an extra US person online.

So for them to invest $15 each in free classes for someone seems like a no-brainer. Plus it buys good PR and goodwill. Plus it's almost certainly tax deductible.

celoyd2• 14 years ago

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem . This is what governments are for.

eCa• 14 years ago

Yes. And as a corollary, taxes.

mtraven• 14 years ago

It is what governments are for, but given the current spectacular failures of government, quasi-monopolistic corporations that can afford it might as well take on some of their functions.

There's a tradition of plutocrats contributing in this way [1], and like the commenter said, it actually would help Google's business.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

jahmed2• 14 years ago

Just because government can or does provide a service does not mean you cant as well.

friism• 14 years ago

I think the Facebook profit per user (from the IPO prospectus) is only ~1$ and it seems likely that the potential users generated using your suggestion will be below average in terms of revenue generation.

afterburner2• 14 years ago

"This is, in part, because outside of the ALA (which is a great organization, a great lobbying body, but perhaps not quite strong enough nor well funded enough) there is no large, overarching public library thing. There isn't a central office that can dictate policy, allocate funds, and launch a massive PR campaign. At different levels, yes, there are state and county and non-profit organizations, but the existential crises that libraries now face is massive, universal, and needs coordinated effort. "

Hmm, maybe a library czar in Washington?

Although something separate from party politics might be better...

melling3• 14 years ago

I skimmed the article and got to the first comment complaining that Larry Ellison spends millions on the America's Cup and he doesn't give a crap ...

Basically, the problem is that for years CA, and America in general, spent money that it didn't have and now it's going to get painful.

There's no point in whining and complaining. Americans are doing it to themselves. Sit down and decide what we can afford to pay for and quit kicking the can down the road.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

I think you read the wrong thing. This post is about the metafilter comment that is a story about a poor person using a library.

melling3• 14 years ago

I thought it was about how people need libraries and the funds are being cut.

mcantelon2• 14 years ago

>Basically, the problem is that for years CA, and America in general, spent money that it didn't have and now it's going to get painful.

I think it's more that we spend money on the wrong things and that taxes aren't structured to reflect the reality that wealth is concentrating into fewer hands.

snowy9092• 14 years ago

RTFOP

feralchimp2• 14 years ago

TL;DR - Just because you don't use the library doesn't mean no one needs them anymore. Not everyone's Real Life Issues are amenable to a self-service web portal, and that's not just because no one has built the right widgets yet.

> it will be a slow death by a thousand cuts

It will be a slow descent into budget fugue, followed by an extremely quick death when we pass an inflection point in "the number of people who remember getting awesome value out of their local/municipal library system."

I bet when a lot of people here first started hearing about library closures in their old neighborhood, or wherever they're living now, their initial reaction was one of total shock followed by "well I guess I can see how that could happen."

When people hear about library closures now, they could be skipping the shock entirely, passing smoothly through "aw that's too bad", and fading into "well there's Google."

> [the library] need[s] to become the center of civic engagement

We need a center of civic engagement with both equality and equity of access. Libraries are a decent foundation on which to build such a thing, but there's at least one common feature of libraries that makes them awful for this: people are supposed to be quiet in the library.

There should be almost nothing quiet about civic engagement, finding a job, learning new skills, research, etc. Less giant rooms with rows of people not saying anything; more smaller sound-proofed rooms with whiteboards and projectors. Like a giant executive briefing center, only with fewer executives and more regular folks with something to ask/teach each other.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

That is a good idea, though I favor chalk boards. But it would be great. In order to bring it about a lot of difficult management problems would have to be solved. For instance, people are going to be turning tricks in all those separated rooms pretty quickly.

feralchimp2• 14 years ago

Technical response: soundproof != optically opaque

Cynical political response: "turning tricks" == good first approximation of dealing with a modern government

Entrepreneurial response: "turning tricks" + video cameras + fast uplink == revenue model

true_religion3• 14 years ago

My old university library had private rooms that you could use to get away from the crowds. They were sound proofed, but had a giant glass wall that faced towards the rest of the people. You couldn't turn tricks there unless every onlooker was in approval.

lemmsjid3• 14 years ago

Santa Monica (near where I live) recently re-opened its public library. A lot of shelf space was sacrificed for meeting rooms. They're basically white board equipped conference rooms with tables and chairs. You walk through there, and see all sorts of groups of people meeting in those rooms, talking animatedly. It's kind of fun to imagine what they're meeting about, I've seen evidence of startups, community groups, etc. based on what's on the board. The rooms are pretty sound-proofed, so you don't hear them as you're perusing the books. There's also quiet study rooms where you can do your business if you want to be absolutely quiet. A lot of space was devoted to a cafe area, which is nice for doing coffee-shop-style laptop work (except they won't kick you out).

Santa Monica is the position of being an economically well-off city (and thus able to afford such a lavish library) with a significant homeless/poor population, which is very well represented in the library. For areas in the midst of complete economic blight, I doubt there's as many niceties opening up--which is sad.

As is the point of the article, in the midst of all this Information Age online-this and online-that, there's a sad lack of civic-mindedness. How does the community as a whole uplift the people within it who are not doing as well? I doubt most of the higher-end property-tax payers in Santa Monica actually go to the library--and it is clearly servicing the people paying the least (or nothing) for it. Sadly, most of the rhetoric I see on the public policy level is, "I was in line at Albertson's and saw someone buying a steak with their food stamps!!! And a bottle of wine! How dare they? You should only be able to buy lima beans and tepid water with food stamps."

mansolo• 14 years ago

It's horrifying that we need a TL;DR for a modest chunk of text - a mere comment.

If our attention spans are that fried, are we any better off than the hypothetical guy trying to fill out a government form?

It's a bit like taking someone's synopsis for what the Bible is about. You can't. You have to read it, experience it and parse it yourself or you can't really know.

Myself, I'm not going to pablum-feed you guys a over-simplified short form version of what I think I just read. Read it for yourself.

No wonder libraries are endangered.

zanny3• 14 years ago

People write TLDRs for their comments whenever they feel they expended more words on the topic than they feel were necessary, it doesn't imply an expectation that no one else would read it.

When I write a fervent wall of text I think is worthy of reading in full, I don't put on a TLDR, I just pity the fool who doesn't take the time to partake of dense knowledge.

So, TLDR, it is the author feeling the content is lacking in a dense section of text more than the reader having a limited attention span that leads to TLDR's. I think.

icebraining6• 14 years ago

The fact that one person wrote a TL;DR is not an indication that we need one. And besides, usually a TL;DR of someone else's post is an opinionated summary, not a simply condensation of facts.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

TL;DR we all have short attention spans now, libraries are in trouble.

derleth• 14 years ago

I'll reconsider the TL;DR when academic papers reconsider the Abstract.

Shenglong2• 14 years ago

Drawing a parallel to the Canadian healthcare system:

I haven't been sick in 12 years. Yet, every year, I pay taxes to keep the public healthcare system running. Even though it's not something I use, undoubtedly, there are people who need it, and wouldn't be able to pay for it if it wasn't public.

About a month ago, I exhibited the symptoms of some kind of ventricular tachycardia (heart arrhythmia). As advised by a friend in medicine (in a different city), I tried to get myself booked for an ECG, to see what exactly was wrong. Without getting into the details, let's just say that even to this day, I haven't been able to get one.

I can definitely see why people don't want to pay, not just for services that they'll never use, but for services they'll probably be unable to use, even if they ever need to.

leot4• 14 years ago

As a Canadian in the U.S., believe me when I say that in America you would be paying more to get even less.

The amount of inefficiency, conflicts of interest, hypocrisy, bureaucracy, and redundancy in the U.S. system beggars belief.

ashayh• 14 years ago

Can you pay and get one? How much would that cost?

msbarnett2• 14 years ago

You're not unable to use the system, you're just not able to use the system frivolously.

Procedures like ECGs arent performed at patient request, they're performed by specialists when a qualified physician determines a need for one and refers you to a specialist.

You can't get yourself an ECG not because they're unavailable, but simply because "Joe Random from city X says you need one" caries as much weight with Heart Specialists as "my cousin Bob says you should give me a new laptop" does with warrantee repairmen.

Shenglong2• 14 years ago

That's actually not true at all. They'll rush ECG procedures if you're currently exhibiting symptoms at that moment. Yes, if I were rushed to the hospital, I could probably get one. Somethings tells me that by then, it's probably too late.

anrope• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm just not in a skeptical mood today, but the anecdote in that story points out something that I tend to take for granted. I'm probably not alone, especially here on HN.

That is, the fact that some people just really don't understand the most basic concepts of using a computer. And it's not their fault.

Your breath seizes in your chest, and you realize you have no idea what to do. You have the form that they gave you at the social services office, which has an address, which you sort of know what that does, but you can't quite remember – 17 minutes, by the way. You try typing X City Social Services in a box at the top, a page comes back and says “address not found” with a list of things below it. You're panicking...

I'm all for increasing the use of technology in order to make things work more smoothly and efficiently, but this story points out just how left-behind this can leave some people.

I guess the answer is better education, and not just in schools. I guess I can be glad that there are a lot of people working in that space. Even then, before anyone can use Khan Academy or enroll in online classes, they need to have a better idea of "what a [web] address does", and sometimes even whether to "do a left or right click".

danielford• 14 years ago

I've been surprised by the lack of technical ability in my college classes, especially from students that are my age or younger. This semester, a student told me she couldn't find a program to write a short assignment. I sent her a link to OpenOffice and was baffled by how excited she was about it. She informed me that she was writing papers nonstop, just because she was happy to finally have a tool that let her do it. And this wasn't a dumb person either. Last week she was half a point away from a perfect score on an exam that would have ruined my semester back when I was in college.

peregrine2• 14 years ago

Sidebar: Memorization is one, highly over valued, facet of intelligence. I've know several of the 'smartest' kids in my classes to be actually very slow, very un perceptive, very 'dumb' by all standards. Nonetheless they got high honors and accolades because they possessed a remarkable ability to memorize and put in crazy hours. Some of these people put int 20+ hours in to get an A in a lab when I would put in 2-3 hours tops and get an AB.

My point is would you want to work with someone who when faced with the issue of having to write a paper doesn't have the spike of genius to search for "word processor" in google?

notatoad2• 14 years ago

if you've ever done phone tech support, you know how inept the average person is when it comes to using a computer. directions like "go to google" or "open up the internet and go to www.some-website.com" might as well be a foreign language.

in my experience, i'd estimate that a solid 25% of the population has no idea how to navigate to an arbitrary website. 'the internet' for them consists of the shortcut icons that dell placed on the desktop when they sold the computer, search results, and links that get emailed to them.

yummyfajitas15• 14 years ago

I'm going to reject one of the premises of the article, namely the premise that he is helping people who are "barely surviving".

Let's consider people who are receiving cash or non-cash benefits, as the article described. Among these people, 67% have cable or satellite TV. 38% have a playstation. 47% own a computer. 23% have a big screen TV. Only 14% of people receiving government benefits lacked all of these luxuries. [1]

It's only in a nation as wealthy as the US that we could describe such a group of people as "barely surviving".

[1] Data from this csv file: http://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Residential-Ene...

Code definitions taken from here: http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/recspubuse05/pubuse05.html

It's my new favorite data set.

[edit: wow, do some data analysis on raw govt data, provide facts, and get downmodded about 3 seconds after posting. Did I accidentally post on reddit?]

urbanjunkie8• 14 years ago

So, there's a significant (14% - 1 in 7 of your dataset) percentage of people without cable tv, playstation, big screen tv. Do they get the help?

lemmsjid3• 14 years ago

I'm struggling to understand what conclusions you can draw from that. For one thing, what of that 14%? Do those people not exist? Are they not statistically significant for you to care about them? For another, are the 47% who own a computer somehow automatically well off?

Do you understand the economic situation a family can be in? They own a computer whose net worth is about $50. At some point they bought a television. Cable--100$ a month for the fancy kind. The worth of all these things put together is far below the monthly cost of their housing, which they struggle to pay each month. They could sell or stop paying for all of those above "assets" and be in danger of not being able to afford housing and food.

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity. So car and gas and commute, the monthly costs of which dwarf the assets you mentioned.

And let's get back to your claimed 14% who have none of these things. Imagine that--I go to the local thrift store and there's old PCs there that are almost given away (I've donated plenty throughout my years as a contractor--they're barely worth the poundage cost). In American culture, not being connected to pop culture is anathema. Just as cell phone usage has exploded in the poorest countries, in America the first thing parents will provide for their children is television.

It is clear your definition of "barely surviving" is different from the author's (and mine). There's always people chiming in on discussions like this with the "starving children in Africa" argument. E.g. we shouldn't feel sorry for the people mentioned in the article because if you lift their shirt you won't see their ribcage standing out (you'll probably see a bunch of fat from their subsistence on cheap processed food). Are we really a society where that is the measure of how well we take care of our citizens? To me not feeding people is barbaric. Not providing health care to everyone is just short of barbaric. Not carving out societal resources (like public libraries) for shared use, targeted at people who slip through the cracks, is terrible.

Enjoy your data set.

yummyfajitas15• 14 years ago

The 14% you describe are bottom 14% of the bottom 10-20% - i.e., the bottom 2-3% of the nation. They can be dealt with by a small, targeted program.

The rest can turn off cable and go pay for a computer at kinkos once in a while. Last time I was in NYC, it was about $0.10/minute, so if the "struggling" man skipped one or two big macs he could afford to pay for internet service (and he'd be slightly closer to a healthy bodyweight).

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity.

You seem to be holding the mistaken belief that the poor work for a living. Please educate yourself. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf

urbanjunkie8• 14 years ago

So, there is a need for external assistance.

pacala• 14 years ago

But the poor might, gasp, enjoy their $100 a month cable. The horror, poor people enjoying something in their otherwise deprived and miserable life.

scarmig• 14 years ago

Totally agree. The poor are lazy entitled pricks. Lucky duckies, as the WSJ aptly coined a couple years back. How dare they get some form of entertainment?

If they really need to find some way to amuse themselves besides staring at the wall all day, they can walk their fat asses two blocks down the street to borrow a book and improve themselves at this place called the...

Oh, right.

vacri6• 14 years ago

6 months ago, I wandered through the Mekong delta, in swampland where half the houses were palm shacks. Standing swamp water all around, no running water (clean or otherwise), shoddy power cables... and yet I still saw the occasional home with a big-screen TV. Sure, older models, CRTs for the most part, but people don't seem too keen on comparing what kind of TVs are around. So some of these incredibly poor swamp-dwellers have TVs, in an area where there are frequently no lights once the sun goes down. We should probably allude that they're wealthy as well, based on that single commodity good.

Another thing your 'shame the poor' position doesn't allow is for people to receive hand-me-downs, or merely to have previously been in better conditions when they could afford luxuries and now have no cashflow or liquid assets. Hell, I've given away about four old laptops (two I inherited free) and have made and given several free-of-charge desktops, two with monitors included.

This is where social conservatism and libertarianism gets you coming and going - "Look - voluntary charity covers the cracks"... then they turn around and admonish the poor for daring to have such items - "You have a 'computer', therefore you're not struggling"

yummyfajitas15• 14 years ago

You know, the poor in the US don't lack clean water, cooking gas, electricity, etc. Their houses are often climate controlled, and they usually have cars to travel with. Malaria is also a minor issue, as are most infectious diseases. From what I've seen (and statistics seem to bear this out), the "poor" in the US lack virtually no essential goods and services and they have many luxuries.

If you disagree, please tell me which essential goods and services you feel the US "poor" lack.

Note that I live in India right now, so I'm likely to laugh at you if you start mentioning consumer goods that even the upper middle class over here don't have.

snprbob86• 14 years ago

This is a very well written story that takes what I already kinda of assumed to be true and made it feel very real. It's quite sad, really.

I don't want to trivialize the plight of the poor, but I'm also concerned with the impact on the world's intellectuals. A somewhat relevant rant follows....

We were down in the bay area meeting investors a few weeks ago, and I took some time to walk around Standford's campus. It's beautiful. It feels somewhat quiet and lonely, but that's simply because it is huge. However, I walked through a few random buildings and delighted in seeing people studying and working. While still quiet, there was an energy to the place. This was a place that brilliant people made magic happen.

It strikes me as odd that so much work these days is done out of coffee shops. I mean, I do it too, but it's really kind of weird. You walk in, all these people have headphones on, are sipping on a latte, and totally ignoring the outside world. People are crammed in like sardines and working like mad men, but it simply doesn't feel like magic is happening.

Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about how NASA is necessary to create the sense of wonder and enchantment to raise a new generation of scientists. He says the NASA budget is simply a great investment. He's right.

I feel the same way about public spaces.

I'd really like to see more energized, magical, beautiful public spaces. I'm not a Stanford student, so I couldn't use their wifi. I had to walk down to University Ave and work out of Paris Baguette. There's just not as much wonder and excitement when you're surrounded by pastries.

adam85• 14 years ago

Really agree with this point. I've worked out of coffee shops for a long time (many of them Starbucks, which has an even worse chance of some sort of co-working energy) and definitely feel like they are very polarizing (either really good and productive or bad and distracting.) I find a similar effect when working near a university in Chicago. There's undeniably a connected, more euphoric feeling to being surrounded by others who are being productive.

I think this lends itself particularly well to the success in co-working spaces. As more and more people seek to become entrepreneurs, seems co-working spaces provide a perfect in between (as well as much less risk) from working in your home/coffeeshops to signing a lease. WeWork in NYC as well as the handful of others in SF are great solutions to this, providing freelancers and small teams the ability to work amongst others and share that connectedness you talked about while at Stanford. Hopefully Chicago will get some more co-working options as well.

Interesting question is how can a coffeeshop embrace this mentality. In the city, people certainly use Starbucks as an office-like environment. While the mix of people is usually pretty good, seems that it's very isolated, with little to no interaction. I wonder if there's a better way to mix the coffeeshop and co-working biz model, perhaps sort of like how I/O ventures does it with Summit.

icebraining6• 14 years ago

Where I live most coffee shops have tables outside (is there a name in English for that space?), so you can work while you watch street vendors, people walking around and grandparents with children, not to mention the sun, trees, etc. It doesn't have a work environment, but it's very reinvigorating to stop for five minutes and appreciate the surroundings.

notatoad2• 14 years ago

>is there a name in English for that space?

you could call it a patio, but that implies a bit more formality than there is at a lot of coffee shops. "tables outside" is probably pretty good.

msbarnett2• 14 years ago

"Patio" is the English word for those spaces, generally.

com• 14 years ago

Depending on your English dialect it might be a terrace, pavement, patio or even verandah seating.

rrreese• 14 years ago

Interestingly the original coffee houses of London where used in somewhat simler ways, as places that merchants would meet and conduct buisness (not exclusively of course).

ck22• 14 years ago

You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War.

The cost of medical benefits for all the soldiers who are mamed but now can survive for 50 years is staggering and will choke our culture to death. All those weapons, fuel, R&D, "homeland security theater", etc. all part of the massive war machine.

But war will always be funded because it's the ultimate high of money and power, to be able to send people to kill and be killed, heck it gives the politicians special "war powers", why would they not want it?

Doesn't matter if it's the left or right in charge, they do love their war and will never, ever stop.

wizzard• 14 years ago

We don't need an educated populace; we just need soldiers.

How many people become soldiers because they are patriots who want to give their lives for their country, and how many become soldiers because the alternative is poverty?

jseliger• 14 years ago

You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War.

I'm glad someone pointed this out, because I came here to do this. But that money has actually gone two places: war and welfare transfer payments, as Alex Tabarrok describes in Launching the Innovation Renaissance, where he says that "the big four of defense, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security eat up $2.2 trillion, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S. federal budget."

We—collectively, as a society—have elected to spend steadily more money on war and transfer payments. A lot of library funding comes from the local and state level, but local taxing abilities are partially contingent on how much the federal government is taking, and what the federal government is spending that money on.

ck22• 14 years ago

War costs are hidden and spread throughout the system. It's far more than the official numbers.

All those injured vets get tons of welfare, well before their elderly years instead of how the system was designed for as a safetynet.

You cannot eliminate the safetynet for poor and elderly - well you could, but whomever does it would be a heartless bastard and march our nation right into hell itself as crime becomes exponential.

You can however eliminate war and the TSA and all these billions of dollars we are wasting to spy on every American.

brianlouisw• 14 years ago

Even though I consider myself basically libertarian I'm often annoyed by the programs that seem to be first in line for budget cuts - libraries, parks, school music programs, and other basic things that don't actually cost very much.

This is by design, not by necessity - cuts to programs that people enjoy or support are more like to encourage voters to accept bond measures, tax increases, etc in order to avoid those cuts.

California spent $10 BILLION on prisons in 2011-2012. The country spent over $80B fighting drugs.

Funding libraries is a rounding error compared to the actual activities voters choose to allow their governments to engage in. If you want well funded libraries - stop voting for politicians whose only solutions involve more jails, more arrests, more wars, and more handouts.

greggman• 14 years ago

If you want a community learning center with computers then why are you asking for a library?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/library

Words matter. People skim, people read headlines. If I read "libraries are in trouble" or "more support for libraries" needed I think "no, anyone with a free smart phone can access the entire internet". They can get a netbook for under $300 or probably a used one for under $50.

Yea, I read the entire post and I understand the guy is poor. I'm just saying that the word "library" is negatively framing the issue.

If we need places for disadvantaged people to be able to use computers and the internet for free and get instruction great! I'm all for that. But that's not a "library"

mcantelon2• 14 years ago

Yeah, "economic integration centers" or something might help frame their utilitarian value. People who can't integrate with the system end up integrating with the criminal world, so it's worth the social investment to provide computer access, etc.

marshallp• 14 years ago

That's a great name for it "economic integration center". There's probably a business idea in there as well. Kind of a franchised system, where a company create a saas app and you local socialpreneurs who stand/park near offices with laptops help people. You often see this in third world countires near government offices such as passport offices who help people for a small fee. The socialpreneurs could probably even be crowdfunded on kickstarter/indiegogo.

kalleboo• 14 years ago

One town in the UK rebranded their Libraries to "Idea Stores" http://www.ideastore.co.uk/

njharman• 14 years ago

Even using the shallow definition for Public Libraries > a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale

That is the exactly what large parts of the Internet is. That they are physically books, cd's, dvds' is absolutely immaterial.

tnuc• 14 years ago

One of the saddest parts of filling in these government forms online is that some of them time out after 15 or 20 minutes.

I helped someone fill out few of these once because they were having trouble. Even when I had all the information in front of me and the person next to me to organize the information it still timed out. I managed to do one of them on the third try.

There is no way that someone with limited computer experience could fill out a lot of these online forms. Phoning gets you nowhere, and visiting the office for help is a waste of a day.

If only government entities could spend some time into making these online forms and applications usable. Fortunately libraries still exist but I fear for how much longer.

thyrsus• 14 years ago

I was subjected to that last weekend, filling out FASFA forms. It would throw up an "I'm timing out" box every ten minutes, and if you didn't click in the next five, it was gone.

It took me 32 working hours to pull together the records to satisfy that form, of which 16 hours were "PTO" from my day job. Mostly because it was effectively necessary to get our 2011 joint tax return done, and my spouse has an (excruciatingly) small business. Once the taxes were done, I used a kitchen timer to make sure I clicked on that "I'm timing out" box which was hidden in another window while I was getting transaction reports.

Someone on NPR had the gall to claim the form would take at most a half hour. The only way I can see that working is if you had no complications in your life (investments, medical expenses, one employer).

gokhan• 14 years ago

If there's demand, there will emerge scriveners of the new era, helping computer illiterate people.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener :

Scriveners remain a common sight in countries where literacy rates remain low; they read letters for illiterate customers, as well as write letters or fill out forms for a fee. Many now use portable typewriters to prepare letters for their clients.

feefie• 14 years ago

If you're the author, thank you for helping these people. I hope your work gives you great pride.

blatherard• 14 years ago

I'm not, but I sent the author of the comment (codacorolla on Metafilter) a message through that site to take a look over here, and also mentioned that there were some appreciations.

tptacek9• 14 years ago

Can I add to this one little point, which is a counterintuitive thing you can do to help your local library:

Use your local library.

During the year we started Matasano our Chicago team spent about 40%-50% of our time working from the Oak Park Public Library, sometimes in meeting rooms we booked, more often at study desks. It was great. The Internet access wasn't amazing but it was totally functional and we could VPN out through it. The desks and working space were if anything better than what we have now (and we really like our office).

There were times I worried that we were being a burden, but the impression I get is that it's the opposite. What's deadly for a local library is for nobody from the community to be using it, for it to have no stakeholders from the tax base of the community. The library staff was always welcoming to us.

Your hip coffee shop on the other hand hates you with a passion it normally reserves for Scott Stapp solo albums. At the coffee shop, you take up space in a business that's driven by turnover. Someone's going to chime in here with a story about a coffee shop that truly loves the startups that park themselves at their tables and order 3 count them 3 cups of coffee in a day, but I've talked to hipster coffee shop people oh-yes-I-have and at least some of you who truly believe you're doing your coffee shop a favor are being tolerated gracefully, not welcomed, like you would be at your local library.

Libraries have an obvious role to grow into as IT hubs for their communities, now that so much of their knowledge-disseminating role has been subsumed by IT. But another related less obvious role is as a hub for local entrepreneurship; thing thing "hackerspaces" are supposed to do, but are (for so many companies) suboptimal at.

icefox• 14 years ago

Growning up I watched as the little libraries around town closed down and the main branch expended. We only went to the main branch when we could get a ride. Recently I read about the ratio of library patrons was proportional to the ability to walk to the library. It would be interesting to know if consolidating libraries was a bigger movement than the towns I happened to live in, but a big change that occurred in the 90's across the country or something.

drewcrawford• 14 years ago

I would LOVE to work out of my local library, unfortunately, here in Austin libraries have the policy that meeting rooms etc. are only for non-profit groups that are open to the public. No private meetings, no "open to the public meetings" that are run by for-profit companies. I suppose your garage startup could probably _get away with_ meeting there, but it's a big no-no.

tptacek9• 14 years ago

The private meeting rooms were nice, but most of the time we just worked from the study desks. Even when we had the private rooms, there was always a feeling of time pressure in them. You might need private space a lot less than you think you do.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

When I was in high school we made much use of library meeting rooms. Do they turn away student groups?

gaius• 14 years ago

Profits -> Taxes -> Funding. Don't bite the hand that feeds!

bmj• 14 years ago

I'd upvote this many times, if I could. I got in the habit of doing several hours of work a week at the library while my kids were doing various activities, and I loved it. At first, I did have that "gee, am I just taking space" moment, but just as Thomas points out, this is actually what libraries are for--they provide knowledge services (that is, books and internet access) for free.

I'd also recommend that if you do use your local library, support it, too. I don't necessarily mean monetarily (which we do, via, uh, late fees), but if someone in power is considering cutting funding, tell them they really shouldn't do that.

tptacek9• 14 years ago

Totally forgot about kids! We took our kids to the library all the time when we were working out of it. Now we have nice offices downtown and our kids get to the library... never. Yet another benefit of working from the local library at least some of the time.

jonhohle2• 14 years ago

I leans heavily toward the libertarian side, but I think libraries are one of the most important social services provided by local governments. Unlike other programs, absolutely everyone can get some direct benefit from the library - no matter what age or income level.

Libraries, in my opinion, are a model of what social services should look like: universally beneficial, only practical at the community level, little chance of moral hazard or conflict of interest by any party involved (don't return a book, you lose check out privileges - the only one hurt is the perp).

Next time you think of buying a book, seriously check out your local library system.

hermannj314• 14 years ago

I'd like to believe that but the tone I got from the story is that we shouldn't be using our local libraries.

I'd hate the thought that I have checked out a book I could otherwise afford to buy and deprived the use to someone that could not. Or that I am using a computer to read Hackernews that an ex-convict needs to use to apply for a government program to keep his grandson alive.

Using the library deprives a slice of the pie to the very people that need it more than you. If you use the library and you can afford the alternative, then you are just as bad as the people that want to close it.

kzrdude• 14 years ago

One example of how unliberal our society has become today I think is "imagine libraries being invented today: media industry would scream piracy"! Those libraries that today experiment with e-books pay ridiculous prices per loan to do so. It's yet another angle where I think it's evident that the copyright lobby is losing perspective and society has lost the compromise struck once over copyright.

mickey74• 14 years ago

i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to me with reasonable probability and period of time. on one hand i'd like to see libraries turn profit (like 'lite' version of video rental model) or at least be self sufficient. on the other hand i want to enjoy reasonably educated population with easy access to methods for self improvement and economic mobility (both up and down) and a 'safety net' in case of uninsured unforeseen events. there's a balance between socialism and pure libertarian model but its so local and complicated and constantly evolving that i just resign myself toward the purest liberty and self responsibility and say fuck the libraries.

johnnybgoode• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's hard to attack libraries. They're one of the best examples of a truly equitable program I can think of. I'd much rather cut even university funding: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3608264

DanBC5• 14 years ago

> Next time you think of buying a book, seriously check out your local library system.

I agree, but there are something like 250,000[1] books published each year.

At just $5[2] per book that's $1,250,000 just to buy each year's worth of books, never mind the staff to do the buying and unpacking and cataloguing and stocking and lending etc etc.

[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per...) (but go careful because who knows where the wikipedia numbers come from)

[2] A ridiculously low figure. Here's some UK data; not sure where it comes from. (http://www.holtjackson.co.uk/cgi-perl/web_avg_book_price.pl)

davidw2• 14 years ago

> I think libraries are one of the most important social services provided by local governments

How about other needs governments sometimes provide to the less fortunate, such as food, shelter, medical care, and universal education?

lbotos• 14 years ago

A friend of Mine just graduated with a Degree in Literature and we talk about the futures of libraries all the time. We often ask what would happen if libraries opened up a small coffee shop/stand inside of them? With enough "marketing" would people go to libraries instead?

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

What you do is co-opt a coffee stand to open shop right outside your front door, or in a secluded corner. That way people can get food and stay longer, but the library doesn't just turn into a coffee shop with a few books.

I've seen a few libraries with the just-outside-the-door model, and a Borders with a small Peet's upstairs. Both were well-executed.

tptacek9• 14 years ago

The Oak Park library had a coffee shop on the first floor (they didn't run it). Many libraries will allow you to bring coffee in.

rpeden• 14 years ago

I've seen quite a few that execute the coffee shop idea nicely!

The main branch of the Ottawa Public Library has a nice little coffee/food shop in the middle of its main floor.

I've also visited two public libraries in smaller cities north of Toronto recently, and they also have similar shops. I think it is a great idea, as I will sometimes go to the library to work for the day and don't even have to leave the building for lunch.

jleader2• 14 years ago

Of the 4 library systems I am most familiar with around here:

* One in a city of 36K people doesn't have refreshments, but is located on a street with lots of restaurants and at least 3 coffee shops within a block or 2.

* One in a city of ~56K people has a coffee kiosk under a canopy/tent alongside the library (this is Southern California, weather's not too big an issue).

* The central library in a city of ~140K has a coffee shop in a sheltered part of a patio/courtyard. I don't think the branch libraries have coffee.

* Los Angeles Central library has 2 restaurants inside the main library building (Panda Express, and a sandwich counter), and a pricier white-tablecloth restaurant in the garden in front of the building. I don't know about the branch libraries.

(edited for formatting)

shoover3• 14 years ago

Indianapolis Central Library is a beautiful facility (it better be, for what we spent on it) with dozens of computers throughout and a coffee bar on the first floor. There's usually a line for both. It's great. It's a setup that works there. My local branch, on the other hand, has a strict no food and drink policy. That's too bad, but you don't need marketing if you have computers. People need internet access and they will max out their library computer hours regardless.

To sliverstorm's point, the Philly-style pretzel shop across the street from my branch does a nice business with kids after school (and me any time of the week), and I long for a nice coffee shop in the adjacent vacant space.

rlvesco7• 14 years ago

In DC we're currently trying to convince the library system to open up their meeting spaces for entrepreneurship / tech meetups. If it works, hopefully it could be replicated to other cities and be a positive part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Below is a talk about transforming part of the MLK library, DC's central library, into a meetup space, FWIW. http://www.robertvesco.com/2012/02/entrepreneurship-public-p...

charlieok• 14 years ago

I did give this a try a while back, as an alternative to local coffee shops. Baristas seem friendly most of the time. I try to buy something every hour or two that I'm there, and respectfully leave after a while if the place is full.

Quite honestly, I didn't enjoy spending time at my local library. The atmosphere was depressing. The people running the place seemed unfriendly. They were used to dealing with people coming in and trying to hide in the bathroom during closing in order to stay the night, and things like that.

There was no good place nearby to get food or drinks. Internet access was slower, more inconvenient and more restrictive than most coffee shops. There didn't seem to be a community of people hanging out working on or talking about interesting things.

If libraries created an inviting place to hang out, I would gladly give them another try. I'm more than willing to buy food and drinks at a markup if they're offered. I consider that a good trade: I get sustenance to keep me concentrating for extended periods of time, and they get some compensation for use of the space and resources.

ontoillogical• 14 years ago

I've never heard of anyone starting a company from a library. Was that something that was commonly done in the 90s (I'm assuming the Chicago office is that old)?

If you were starting again in 2012, would you pick a library over a hackerspace or a shared office type deal for any reason other than cost?

tptacek9• 14 years ago

We started in 2005.

itmag• 14 years ago

During the year we started Matasano our Chicago team spent about 40%-50% of our time working from the Oak Park Public Library,

That's fascinating.

What are some other unconventional ways to find space to hack on projects?

shoover3• 14 years ago

Yes. Circulation and computer usage stats keep the branches open and drive staffing budgets (along with political skill of management, of course). Staff may be overworked and grumpy, but they do derive immense satisfaction and their livelihood from helping patrons find what they need and seeing them come through the doors for any reason other than to complain. When my wife worked at a busy little branch in Oakland, all of these things were frequent topics of dinner conversation.

I'm not sure if this counts in the same way, but I'm a huge user of inter-library loan; large city systems HAVE the obscure computing and other books I want to read, but there's no way each little branch can.

farhanpatel• 14 years ago

I love libraries as much as the next guy. I would love to study at them. But as a student I dont want to study at a place that closes at 5pm on a Saturday. I usually dont want to start studying till 4pm. Compared to my local Starbucks that closes at 11pm.

We have a new library in my city that is beautiful and a massive 77,000 square feet on 4 floors. http://www.flickr.com/photos/petenator/6866904623/

I love studying at my school campus. Its open 24 hours and relatively quite. If libraries could stay open longer I would frequent them a lot more.

DanKnox• 14 years ago

I am earnestly surprised by the collective HN reaction to this story. While at first glance it may seem as though there are commenters on very opposite ends of the geopolitical spectrum, they all have one thing in common. The distinct belief that this is someone else's fault other than their own.

No matter your stance on public vs private services, what good does it do to argue on the internet about how other people are running things. What happened to the government formed of the people and by the people, and the intrinsic responsibility in these types of matters that we all should bear? When will we all grow tired of commenting from the sidelines and begin to get in the game?

This group as a whole consists of some very smart, creative people, with a heavy lean towards entrepreneurialism. I would be willing to bet that if we all put our heads together we could come up with a solution that would not only put these libraries back in the black, but could generate extra revenue for our companies as well.

To kick things off I will throw out the first idea. Obviously, companies producing web applications have a vested interest in the universal access of technology. What if we could fund some of these training classes by offering these public libraries referral programs that would allow them to profit from teaching customers how to use our applications and services? Citizens learn new technology critical to their well being, we receive new signups for our services, libraries make a cut. Obviously this is very general and ripe with logistical complexities. It is meant to spark the minds of people much smarter than I am.

Not to sound too ridiculous here, but I for one still believe that we can fix this country if we ditch the someone else's problem attitude and start focusing on solutions.

snowy9092• 14 years ago

Thank you for this comment. This is one of the best posts that I have read on HN (the original one) and I think it behoves everyone on the better off side of the digital divide to consider how this gap can be closed. I sincerely hope that the compassion in this world has not be drowned out by the noise of 'entrepreneurism' Looking at the great entreprenuers of the 19th century, nearly all were characterised by following a vision and giving back to the community.

orbitingpluto• 14 years ago

If someone thinks libraries are antiquated and are no longer useful then they are just plain ignorant. They really have no idea.

I'm home and I'm using online resources from my library at this very moment. I use online library resources about 20-30 hours per week.

I regularly send off emails and notes of appreciation for their services they offer. I've also established a relationship with IT in several libraries as a go to person when they need an external check on a service that I regularly use (EZProxy issues usually). Why do I do that? It's actually completely selfish of me. I want them to know that the esoteric and underused databases that they are subscribing to are in fact being used and offering aid diagnosing helps uptime. I was actually told that they were going to unsubscribe to my favourite portion of a database because they didn't think anyone was using it!

I made a random comment to a librarian about a year ago. She started showing me their subscription databases and in 10 minutes I was hooked.

Librarians are so god damn helpful.

robryan• 14 years ago

I like the idea of these aspects of the library being somewhat replaced by the coworking space.

Where I work out of we have a lot of space for random drop ins, currently these people though are mostly highly technical. Government could provide funding for a place like this to hire someone to assist people getting started with technology.

While most of us working there are busy, we can usually take a small amount of time out of our day to meet someone new and give them a hand.

rmason• 14 years ago

The situation in Detroit is dire with the most frequently used libraries being closed. There's strong community support to keep the libraries open but the city is broke.

http://michigancitizen.com/neighbors-refuse-to-give-up-east-...

The Detroit library houses the second greatest collection in the world of baseball memorabilia which was given to them by the late Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell. Access is limited, items are being stolen and the collection isn't being well preserved. This collection could be a tourist attraction as a separate museum that would be self sustaining but the city lacks the seed capital to build it.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/report_e...

I know it's popular in the tech world to say that libraries will disappear with the digitization of books. But what you don't understand is that libraries are the heart and soul of the communities that they serve and no software program can replace the function they serve.

anamax• 14 years ago

> There's strong community support to keep the libraries open but the city is broke.

Not quite. The city is spending its money on other things.

I'll bet that Detroit is cutting library spending while continuing to spend money on things that are less important than libraries.

learc83• 14 years ago

The only thing I can think of for libraries to do, is to morph into some kind of generic public meeting place.

Maybe something like a coffee shop/coworking space/social club hybrid.

rwhitman• 14 years ago

I hope that the author can take their thoughts to a wider audience than a comment on metafilter. This is a moving and thoughtful article that really needs to be published...

funkah• 14 years ago

I wonder how long the libraries of America could operate on the money we spent for one week of the Iraq war.

bsb• 14 years ago

A public library as a nice place to get a meeting space, ie for a startup, is a great thing. This post highlights to me the need to expand/improve libraries as both physical and digital resources

nazgulnarsil• 14 years ago

first world poor are not an interesting class of people. There are bigger fish to fry.

robocop• 14 years ago

This is a good case for providing state-funded public computer centers, but not such a good case for continuing to fund large collections of books.

gioele• 14 years ago

> Look to Britain.

What happened to UK libraries?

The poster says

> Today, California cuts the funding for interlibrary loan (oh, sorry young, rural, LGBTQ youth who was hoping to get an anonymous loan of a book that might tell you that your life isn't a freakish abomination as so many of your class-mates insist, here, try this copy of The Sweet Valley Twins from 1989 instead). Tomorrow we have to charge for meeting rooms and our fines have been increased by 150%. The day after that we're a contracted out to a company that puts advertising in your books, has low, low rates on Red Box(C) rentals, and who's under absolutely no compulsion to protect your checkout history from police searches (also, you now get advertising in your email based on that history as a Value Added Service!)

Are there libraries in UK with advertisements in books and low rate rentals in place of free lending?

I remember there were talks in UK about putting advertisements in the official gazette but I hope they didn't really did it.

prophetjohn• 14 years ago

The story at the beginning was so depressing. It makes me really want to call my library on Monday and see if I can teach a computer class.

jdietrich2• 14 years ago

OP's statement is a strong argument against libraries.

We're spending good money on buildings full of books that inadvertently provide some really important social services. If you've got a bucket catching drips from your leaky roof, you need roof repairs, not a better bucket.

Here in England, we have an organisation that does exactly what the OP is espousing - guiding people who don't know where to turn for help. It's called the Citizens Advice Bureau, it has been in existence since 1939 and it now has 20,000 volunteers working out of 3200 locations. The CAB provides impartial and confidential advice and assistance on just about any issue someone might bring through the doors. Crucially, the CAB is an independent charity, so is trusted by marginalised people in a way that no government agency could be.

I'd like to say that I'm surprised there's no equivalent in the US, but sadly I'm not. I just don't think there are enough Americans prepared to give up big blocks of their time to help people who we'd all cross the street to avoid. I don't think any society that still uses the word "ghetto" in the present tense is capable of building such an organisation.

I understand that there are agencies sporadically providing similar services, but that lack of consistency is half the problem - if your brand isn't ubiquitous, you're failing your most needy clients. Now please, go out and prove me wrong. Build an absolutely kick-ass advice agency and rub my limey face in it. There are few things that would please me more.

eaurouge• 14 years ago

Having in lived in both countries, and being originally from neither, I can tell you that's not true. I obviously don't know what percentage of the population would be willing to volunteer their time, but I don't think the English are any more altruistic than Americans are.

Helianthus• 14 years ago

Your mistake is you think a library is for providing books. In fact libraries stand for free public _information_. The distinction is critical and vastly important.

recoil• 14 years ago

You are flat-out wrong about Americans and their willingness to give up their time for charitable causes [1].

Interestingly I am also British and my impression from American friends and acquaintances was generally the opposite to yours: many of them had volunteered in the past or were involved with volunteering, which is something I came across less frequently in the UK (I emigrated 4 years ago so this may have changed, I suppose). This impression is borne out by the report above.

While the social issues faced in every country differ greatly for any number of reasons governed by history, demographics, etc. etc., there are enough similarities between the two countries as to make you sound very insensitive to the issues faced by many inhabitants of the UK.

To use one small example, the Gini co-efficient measure of income inequality (after taxes) for the UK is closer to that of the US than it is for almost every other European country [2]. I don't think anybody would dispute that there are a lot of poor and disadvantaged people in the UK.

The main difference between the two countries has less to do with the willingness of citizens to donate time or money to charitable causes than it does to do with the "social safety net", provided by the government. That's a whole different subject though.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitab... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...

jdietrich2• 14 years ago

Both figures are disingenuous. American charitability has to be seen through the prism of religiosity. An exceptionally high proportion of American donation and volunteering is done through church groups and the vast majority of that activity should not reasonably be considered 'giving'. A church-sanctioned rock band will be included in the statistics as an enormous number of volunteer hours. A church organisation is a tax-deductible charity, regardless of whether it achieves any charitable aims.

Britain's Gini coefficient is substantially distorted because of London. The Gini coefficient is a pure measure of income inequality, so is massively influenced by the presence of people with exceptionally high incomes. It tells you almost nothing about the gap between the middle class and the working class in a developed country. When your country includes a megalopolis that's the world's most popular playground for billionaires and tax haven for multinationals, that distorts the figures somewhat. Factor out a couple of London boroughs and our Gini index changes dramatically. Likewise, France's Gini index would plummet if they had a territorial claim to Monaco.

marshray2• 14 years ago

(Don't take this as crass as it sounds, it's more like an exercise to get back to the theme of the site.)

How would you make a startup business out of this situation?

Either in support of public libraries, or in the vacuum left by their decline.

BadassFractal• 14 years ago

I apologize ahead of time if I'm going to sound leftist, but the powers that be don't really need a well educated lower class that is able to think for itself and easily get access to quality information. It goes against the interests of the status quo.

However, if there's a lot of money for everybody to be made, then it will create some incentives to give these people just enough instruction that they can perform online purchases. The problem is that the lower 20-40% of the US population are in so much financial distress that purchasing apps for an iPad or a kindle book is not even remotely within their realm of possibilities. For them, there's Walmart.

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

How do government services in the US get away with this? Walmart has computers for people to apply for jobs with sitting in their stores, why can't the government do the same. A kiosk is expensive sure, but can't be impossible...

mckoss3• 14 years ago

It's a compelling story, BUT, are libraries really the best way to solve this social problem? Most tax payers don't realize just how expensive their library system is. In my county, we spend $90 million per year for our libraries - about 0.5% of property taxes. As a home owner, neary 15% of the cost of your home, is being funneled to the library system.

I am very in favor of community public investment, but I am skeptical that our libraries are an efficient allocation of the very large claim they already have on our public taxes.

Note in this story how the grandfather was so poorly served by the system. It's not designed to serve those who need the system most. In the end he only gets reluctant help from someone overqualified (overpaid) to give him the kind of assistance he needs.

Unlike other suggestions in this thread, I do not agree that the answer is to prop up the failing library system by pretending to use its services to make their numbers look better. We should be demanding that our libraries evolve to remove wasteful and expensive services (that many of its users can already afford to pay for directly), and focus on the needs of those who cannot pay.

Our average library staff salary and benefits cost $25/hr - couldn't we double the assistance to the underprivileged by paying trained "Web Assistants" $10/hr to help them instead?

ryanwaggoner• 14 years ago

In my county, we spend $90 million per year for our libraries - about 0.5% of property taxes. As a home owner, neary 15% of the cost of your home, is being funneled to the library system.

Huh? I'm not understanding your math here at all...

mckoss3• 14 years ago

I was doing a back of the envelope NPV calculation - 30 years of 0.5% payments -> 15%. Depending in the discount rate, it's less than that; which is why I said "nearly".

abhaga• 14 years ago

Libraries are one thing I miss a lot in India since returning from US. Public library system is virtually non-existent here. It is sad to see it getting destroyed where it existed.

bobz• 14 years ago

This is a reply to several comments, but is important enough that I wanted it at the top level.

Andrew Carnegie founded MUCH more than the Carnegie Library. In fact, a mind boggling number of public libraries in the States alone, and more worldwide, not to mention trade schools, medical research institutions, etc.

Not only did he give the money to fund the library, but he only did so in cases where the town was ready to take on the burden of supporting it.

He was a man with an ego, but his generosity in this regard goes beyond ego. He was a man of virtue, who genuinely sought to see his fortune go back into society to make it a greater place. The amount of good he did boggles my mind and humbles me.

The abundance of public libraries in this country are not a result of liberalism in government. They are a result of liberalism in men's souls. So stop bitching about what other people are doing with their wealth, earned or unearned. That does not make you a better person.

In my opinion, the rich are not necessarily wrong to be abandoning the U.S. middle classes. I would not be surprised if that wealth is not sitting in Scrooge McDuck's money vaults, but is instead being funneled into the third world now, raising up people with a true appreciation for the sacredness of life and wealth, with more perspective and less entitlement.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. No, government has never been the solution. It has at best been a custodian, as it is with the public library system in the states. But every book in there, every microchip, and most of the buildings and maintenance are made of the lifeblood of hard working people who dedicated their life to creating more than they consumed.

cconroy• 14 years ago

It would be great if the government's budget included a computer and basic internet access in its assistance programs. I can't imagine this would be too expensive. Also people would benefit from the increasingly free education provided by Stanford, Udacity, etc.

shoover3• 14 years ago

The concept of life getting harder for many people as computers take over is troublesome. I mean, we know to expect and accept some amount of frustration in return for efficiency and cost saving in general and computerizing anything in particular, e.g. downtime; more passwords to remember; UI, server, and workflow glitches; "Why can't this stupid thing just figure out what I mean?!" Ever try [[http://pic.bighugh.com/17.png][printing a label from usps.com]]?

Eliminating paper forms sure seems like a slam dunk, though, doesn't it? Overall it is... for those of us with computers in every room and in our pockets. Indeed, what/who will fill the gap those in the shoes of the OP's example when library hours are reduced again and again and eventually the branches close and they are suddenly without internet access?

Anyone watch the recent Bret Victor talk and looking for something to fight by inventing?

thewisedude• 14 years ago

Let me try to shed light on the other side of the argument. Based on the author's experience, it looks like what is really necessary for this day and age is a public browsing center with enough resources to teach computer "illiterates" [for a lack of a better word] how to find what they want in the digital world. NOT a library per se...now you might ask what the difference is : having a public library implies money has to spent on buying and managing books- which can be prohibitively expensive.

Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

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