I enjoyed this article a great deal. The Univac at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair appears to have been the library equivalent of Disneyworld's "The House of Tomorrow".
The bibliographic information provided by the Univac was comically incomplete. What good was such a complicated and enormous toy without a more complete database on which to draw? It is difficult to imagine librarians of the future slaving over the sort of Univac job killer as portrayed by the movie Desk Set. I do not understand why so many librarians would volunteer their time for such a bizarre exhibit. As far as library technology is concerned, I have enjoyed reading stories of Ed Wood-esque ambition and enthusiasm throughout this course.
In the end, well-thought out "competitors" like Google and Amazon may be just the kick in the pants that the library profession needed. Within the profession, librarians came up with wild ideas like LIBRARY-21. With something to react against, the future of libraries seems more clear. With private giants like Google and Amazon dominating the informational landscape, libraries are in a better position to think about the library's place in the world. Since the success of Google and Amazon is now long established, positioning the library profession relative to such organizations seems like a quality investment.
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