Invisible Office: The Jessamyn West Interview

Superstar librarian and technology pioneer Jessamyn West has been an active blogger and social networker since the early days of the Internet. She started her own blog during the first tech boom, in January 1997, primarily as a way to update her mother on her life in Seattle.

Today, jessamyn.com is a multidimensional site with journal posts and movie and book reviews.
And today, her mother even blogs. Jessamyn is also the founder of librarian.net, home to the ‘rarin librarian,’ a blog featuring international library news; she is the moderator of MetaFilter; and an active Wikipedian. And she does all this from a rural Vermont town where it’s not always easy to find Wi-Fi.

Big Think spoke with Jessamyn West about how the latest technology enables her to live a dream life in a rural locale and still stand out as a tech wiz.

This interview is part of a series on BigThink, sponsored by Dell and Digital Nomads.

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Comments (6)

by John L. / November 11, 2008

I once met Jessamyn at South by Southwest. She’s really the model of what technology can make possible–she has a true cosmopolitan mind but lives out in the middle of nowhere. In any event, I’d love to see her updates to her mom these days–how must times have changed!
by VCM / November 12, 2008

Jessamyn West is what I hope to achieve when I complete my Master’s in Library and Information Science. Many people focus on the negative aspects of technology being so used so readily in our daily lives and how this can be so invasive. People fail to notice how by having technology being used so readily gives us a certain freedom by allowing us to live in the middle of nowhere and yet still be able to communicate and not be left wanting.
by Seamus / November 13, 2008

That’s and interesting point, VCM. It really does give us freedom. We can be anywhere working. I’d rather be able to do that, than confined to one space of work.
by Anderson Allen / November 17, 2008

The great thing about having the entire world’s knowledge at one’s fingertips means that small-town libraries now have access to the same information as the largest libraries in the world, which leads to a distribution of knowledge and sharing information.
by DS / November 21, 2008

True, but do you really think that the information on line is really as good as what’s in books? THere’s a lot of false information on line, I think. I looked at an interview with Jimmy Wales on the subject, and his argument is that the Internet is self policing, so that the bad information ultimately disappears, but what about the mean time?