Summer's Gone

(Friday)  And that's it.  Glassy-eyed and slightly numb, we closed the doors on summer break at 6 p.m. today.  School starts on Monday, as do classes at FAMU and FSU.  The Tallahassee Democrat published it's "Welcome Back" issue today, full of ads by local businesses hoping to attract college student dollars.  This is not the weekend to visit Target or Bed Bath & Beyond.

I might have a different impression were I the Sheriff's Deputy or a children's librarian, but this summer was not as stressful as others I have known.  Given that so great a portion of our attention in this new century is devoted to public-access computing, I can say that overall, demand has fallen steadily since 2006.  Wireless laptops and smartphones have made the public-access library desktop computer less necessary for many.

The summer of 2006 remains a high-water mark, because 2006 was the year of MySpace.  The library was mobbed, that summer, with teens making MySpace pages and sharing their skills with friends.  The MySpace mobs are gone, though I still see lots of boys on Meez, which I wrote about last summer.  There must be countless MySpace ghost pages, abandoned in cyberspace.