@merica personal tech: Web 2.0: My great global library

When I was 12 years old, I had a homework in my school that was to create a book of poems of great authors in Brazilian literature. I remember that during a month, I went to the municipal library in my city, Sao Jose dos Campos. The library is named Cassiano Ricardo, the name of a renowned poet of Brazilian literature, born in São José dos Campos.

I spent a lot of time to prepare this book because the books were shared among all students in the room or among many students across the city who visited the library. Moreover, I had to manually and have a nice calligraphy otherwise the teacher would not understand anything and my result would be low. The libra

ry is very beautiful and is in a historic building in the downtown.

During the technical course, I visited the library

in the ITA Sao Jose dos Campos, seeking the most current books IT area. A huge library not only books, but articles, magazines, and a building with a beautiful architecture.

At UNIVAP, I spent several nights in library studying during my graduation.

Some years later, I'm in the master's degree in another country and back to the libraries. But this time with very different resources. Books I hardly lent, I was studying Information Technology and in this field there is a lot of information in the Web. I went to the library to study because I felt more motivated seeing other people also studying, especially during the tests. The library became virtual, I usually accessed the university's main page to find articles about scientific publications, or found information in the articles of the public Web in general. My favorite places were the main library of the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria. Again, beautiful architecture and interesting, that attracted my attention when I was tired of my computer.

At that time I used basically searching through Google or Google Scholar.

Then came the RSS and a new way to receive information, but then I have to go into each site to sign posts, and receive information automatically from a group of sites that I was interested.

Then came also twitter, where I get information from several people, with short sentences and I do decide if I want to read or not. But my range of information sources has greatly increased, because now beyond me, has a group of people visiting various sites and reading different information and sharing with me.

Visiting sites and blogs daily, I have noticed that in addition to reading, the Internet users are questioning and registering their opinions, which makes the Web more democratic, because nothing is taken as absolute truth. People read and tell if they agree or not.Some people say that the Internet makes everything a copy and paste, nobody invents anything, however, I do not see that. With so much information circulating humanity has a great opportunity to improve ideas in ever-increasing rate. I do not see that education will suffer because the new society develops learning to use their critical thinking and vision.

I really like this video of Michel Serres. It is a message that reflects very well this evolution. In the next few years the Internet will become an effective tool for collaboration, so it is only the start of learning.