The Road to Perdition

I asked a friend of mine if she would like to twitter or wiki with me. She drilled me to the wall with a suspicious glare followed by a high-pitched squealed, "You want me to what?!"

In that moment my mind reshuffled and mutated. I'm sure she thought I was depraved and about to lead her into a deadly sin. She now saw me as a crazed infidel that was inticing her down the road of wickedness to commit some sinster act that would put us both on that well-trodden road to hell. I sputtered a protest, waving my arms like an over-inspired preacher. I insisted she had misunderstood me and baked under her disapproving scowl. My first impulse was to hide under my desk, but could not leave my friend in a state of unenlightenment. I had to drag her into the 21st century.

"Wiki wiki," I said as she retreated away from me. Her face screwed up into a knot of stark fear. She thought I was casting a pagan curse on her soul.
"Twitter, flickr, RSS, YouTube, blog!" I continued.

"Back!" she screamed, "I have garlic!"

Oh, what a mess! I'd have to try a different tact. I took a deep calming breath and said as sweetly as I could muster, "Remember, I'm a librarian. We're generally harmless."

She licked her dry lips, trembled and crossed herself.

From there we were able to have a quasi-coherent conversation about all things I'd been learning about through krl2pt0. By the time she stopped twitching I had completed imparting my new knowledge. "A wiki has a lot of cool stuff," I gushed, "like collaborative learning, mail, discussions, communcation, explanations, brain-storming, one-stop shopping, special groups, programs, reader's advisory, social experiences, archives, repositories and... more stuff."

"Oh," her eyebrows were so high they seemed to recede into her hair line. "You mean like... a library?"

She was right. A wiki was a library. We had all that cool stuff with the added bonus of expert guides. We'd been a wiki for years and didn't know it.
We were no longer limited to the physical walls of our buildings. We could touch the lives of people who were afraid to leave their homes, centophobes, bibliophobes, coulrophobes, geliophobes, and metathesiophobes. And especially those with phronemophobia. If we used all the tools available to us then we could reach everybody in the world except those who were intentionally avoiding us and those without electricity and flushing toilets. Virtual outreach. Going places we weren't invited. Grabbing people using the element of suprise. Being and lurking in unexpected places. The innocent would find a library no matter where they went and ultimately realize that the ubiquitous library had become an essential part of their lives.

Then they'd vote for our levy.