Library Technology Reports (vol. 56, no. 2), “Moving Forward with Digital Disruption: What Big Data, IoT, Synthetic Biology, AI, Blockchain, and Platform Businesses Mean to Libraries,” by Bohyun Kim

Digital disruption, also known as “the fourth industrial revolution,” is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. This issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 56, no. 2), “Moving Forward with Digital Disruption: What Big Data, IoT, Synthetic Biology, AI, Blockchain, and Platform Businesses Mean to Libraries,” examines today’s leading-edge technologies and their disruptive impacts on our society through examples such as extended reality, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), synthetic biology, 3-D bio-printing, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and platform businesses in the sharing economy. This report explains (1) how new digital technologies are merging the physical and the biological with the digital; (2) what kind of transformations are taking place as a result in production, management, and governance; and (3) how libraries can continue to innovate with new technologies while keeping a critical distance from the rising ideology of techno-utopianism and at the same time contributing to social good.