Libraries Plus Cloud Computing Equals Human Rights:
�Open Information Requires Open Infrastructure
Key Topics
Al Cordle
Antony Falco’s Bio
Currently COO of Basho Technologies, an open-source cloud database company
Twenty employees, distributed across country
Make Riak, an open source database
Executive at Akamai Technologies, which built one of the first global “cloud” services in 1999
At Public Citizen, a Ralph Nader advocacy organization, built first web site in 1995
Worked at Aspen Systems, putting government clearinghouse info on the web in 1996
Every job that has involved the internet has involved librarians.
The librarian at the start of the Internet
Human Rights and Information
From Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
This statement puts librarians and the technologies of information transmission dead center in the struggle for universal human rights.
THE GENESIS OF THIS IDEA
Human rights, information, and a burgeoning friendship
The Inception of the idea:
South Africa / race relations
What I learned about Truth�
What I learned about truth….�
“Truth,” or the information that underpins open societies, has little value if not accessible to the populace.
We became interested in the relationship between free information and infrastructure.
Today’s internet infrastructure – the cloud - is not as free as you might think.
Infrastructure of Today
Where is information infrastructure headed?
What are the trends and what do they mean for information freedom?
“Cloud applications can be cheaper to develop than other types of applications, especially because it removes the need to worry about how and where users install software…The net of it is that you spend hundreds of hours less in support over the life of a product for a group of customers.”
- Matt Wegner, CEO, Aviary
Making Art Pay, Kate Green, Technologyreview.com,
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22607/?a=f
What is cloud computing?
A new approach to managing computing infrastructure
On-demand - Storage, compute power (CPU), memory, bandwidth
Virtualization – software that divides a physical server into multiple virtual servers with a fraction of the storage, CPU, memory, bandwidth
Infrastructure, NOT applications
Google Docs is not cloud, but an app running on cloud infrastructure.
The resources and software used to manage those resources are “the cloud”
Three Defining Characteristics
Utility-like – on-demand capacity, delivered automagically
Like water from tap or electricity in the United States
Opaque – where the app is running doesn’t matter. The “app” is decoupled from physical servers and data centers.
A unit of cloud infrastructure might use a fraction of the resources of a single server or pool many physical devices (cluster)
Programmable – you can write software that manages the use of resources
Example: as user thresholds are met during a day, more resources are recruited to meet demand. These resources can be automatically released as traffic dies down.
Follow-the-sun, annual traffic spikes for e-commerce, the Oprah effect
APIs – the tools and instructions one application uses to interact with another application
Who owns the cloud?
Not you.
Amazon, Joyent, Rackspace, Microsoft, Google, large network providers like Level 3
State-owned network/hosting providers
Internet providers control access –
Vodafone in Egypt
Current Chokepoints
What’s needed?
Infrastructure commons
Economic pressure applied not to the infrastructure companies, but their clients.
Examples of Open Source Infrastructure
Rackspace’s Openstack – cloud stack
Basho Riak – open-source version of Amazon storage engine
SOLR/Lucene – Apache Foundation software for searching documents
The Role of Librarians
In A Democracy, Libraries Have A Particular Obligation . . .
21.Why do libraries have an obligation to provide government information in digital format?
The role of libraries is to provide ideas and information across the spectrum of social and political thought and to make these ideas and this information available to anyone who needs or wants it. In a democracy, libraries have a particular obligation to provide library users with information necessary for participation in self-governance. Because access to government information is rapidly shifting to digital format only, libraries should provide access to government information in this format.
From Questions and Answers: Access to Digital Information, Services, and Networks: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights
The Librarians’ Mission, Part Two
22. What is the library’s role in the preservation of information in digital formats?
The digital medium is ephemeral and information may disappear without efforts to save it. Libraries may need to preserve and archive digital information critical to their mission.
From Questions and Answers: Access to Digital Information, Services, and Networks: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.
Towards A New Definition Of �Intellectual Freedom
The mere existence of information does not mean we have a democracy
The freedom that underpins human rights must include infrastructure for storing, retrieving, and analyzing that information.
Recent history clearly demonstrates we cannot depend on corporations and governments to protect those freedoms.
Librarians Need To Acquire New Proficiencies
23. Do libraries have a role in supporting the creation and distribution of digital information by patrons?
Library services should reflect the library’s specific mission and the objectives of the institution. For example, some schools may have budgeted funds to support the creation, storage, and distribution of student-generated content; others may not have such resources. Academic libraries may have resources for “creation and distribution” to which their enrollees would have access but the community users would not, including their intranet and campus e-mail. Public libraries generally must consider all eligible users rather than a minority when offering services.
From Questions and Answers: Access to Digital Information, Services, and Networks: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights
Concrete steps