Automation in the Stacks

When power looms appeared in England, the weavers revolted and smashed. Mankind may not have learned a lot since then, but the automators have. Though Harvard raised riots for Pogo, Latin, and panties, there will be no upheaval over Widener's mechanized checkout station. Who would lead it? The unemployed old librarians now washing decades of Cambridge dust into azure Tampa Bay? The young men whose requests are received and punched by the fewer but much finer female technicians replacing the old librarians?

Satisfaction is the warp of the social fabric. Everything else is woof.