Techies

So, I've been reading random Google+ evaluations I run across in the media since I first learned about it.  And most of them say that the initial users are/were all techies.

So... am I a techie?  This lumping in of all the early users as somehow part of a tech community confused me.  My brother?  Sure, my brother is a programmer.  I got my invite from him, in the last week of June.  Sure, he's a techie.  But me?  I don't know.  A geek, for sure.  But I'm sort of a technology Luddite:  if it's not useful, I don't use it.  I don't do tech for the sake of tech.  I don't even really read sci-fi.

The bulk of the people I have added to my circles (about 150 people) are relatives, friends (ones I've actually met in person), and other librarians.  That's not really different from Facebook, but I like the Google+ interface better so far.

But the people I've added - except for my handful of relatives who work with computer code, and my husband, who makes computers, printers, and other office equipment play nice again - they're not techies, unless you want to lump all of library-land into the overarching tech community.  And other than the librarians who work specifically with the systems side of things or are personally fascinated with technology, I don't think most librarians think of themselves as techies.

Information specialists?  But of course.  In general we know how to organize and retrieve information.  (It's kind of, you know, what we do)  Educators?  For certain.  Even if their training focused on classifying and cataloging information, most librarians can get help a patron find (and learn to find) information, or, if it's not locally available, find out where to find it.

But technology gurus?  Eh... not as a whole.  Sure, some of us in the library world can tell you why your laptop isn't talking to our wifi, and we can (if it's capable of doing so) probably make it work for you, but a lot of us will hit a wall of either knowledge or understanding if it's not a simple or routine fix, at which point we're going to point you to (if there is one) the IT department (or the librarian or library employee specifically tasked with knowing how to make such things work).  We may have fancy smart phones (if we can afford them), but a lot of us are just as happy with the simple little flip phones that don't even have a camera.  Blogging librarians abound, but (judging by a Web 2.0 class I recently took) just as many hardly even use e-mail at home.

So how did all these librarians, several of whom I'm fairly sure are not your average techie, get into Google+ within the first two weeks?  I have no idea, but what it does tell me is that the communities on Google+ are a lot more... well, personal, because the people writing the articles didn't see these clusters of librarians that I was seeing, and I wasn't seeing the clusters of techies that they were seeing.  And, at least for me, Google+ doesn't mean waiting for my friends to eventually be able to join.  Most of my friends and family are already there.

Four or five more people and I can, ahem, probably ditch Facebook.  Perhaps I will one day be free of the guilt trip that is Fishville.