The opening keynote at Computers in Libraries 2025 was a conversation between David Weinberger and Michael Peter Edson on the topic of Libraries in the Age of AI. Weinberger is a Harvard metaLAB researcher, author of a number of books (Everyday Chaos is the latest and he has another in the works), and a columnist for KMWorld (www.kmworld.com). Edson is a digital strategist who has worked in and founded several museums, including the Museum of Solutions in Mumbai, India (https://infotoday.com/cilmag/jan25/Ojala–The-New-Museums-and-Libraries-of-the-Future-Digitized-Converging-and-Innovative.shtml)
They talked about Weinberger’s realization, early on, that the web took a sledgehammer to old structures of knowledge and organization, as hyperlinks restructured everything. Generative AI is doing much the same today. He focused on the unknowability of our world and how difficult it can be to understand how the future happens. He added, “The only real law in the universe is irony.”
For libraries, Weinberger thinks AI can be used to develop a sense of community and what the community values based on data the library already has. He is firmly convinced the AI will have a major effect on libraries.
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