Since opening James B. Hunt Jr. Library, N.C. State has resembled a freshman who just won the first prize at the annual design contest. 

The Internet is flooding with pictures of the newly inaugurated Hunt Library. There are articles and videos popping up everywhere. People are talking about the technological marvel and architectural brilliance of the building. Library folks have been giving interviews and quotes for articles. Every bit is well deserved. 

Hunt Library is decorated with an assorted collection of technologies, and user experience and digital media seem to be the theme of the party.

From the huge MicroTile screens, interactive displays to the latest Microsoft Surface on offer in technology lending, everything is ultra-high-tech. Two visualization “immersion” labs are coming in a month’s time and a plethora of modern furniture arrays the building.

Hunt Library is a cupboard full of toys, open for all the kids as the teacher watches them play. 

The thought behind the technologies is clear. The high-tech game lab will help the students studying game design get a real feel of next-generation games they intend to make. The Raspberry Pi boards and the Arduino boards are available for the computer engineers to play. The focus is clearly on makers — people who make things work.

Yet, something seems amiss. What is the point of a new building? Is it all about opening up a bag of new toys? Is the Hunt Library only a bigger space for awesome technology tools to keep? 

Centennial Campus required a soul. Did it get a soul or a big showcase? A soul is meant to radiate life. If technology is misunderstood to be the soul, we might as well announce the age of cyborgs. 

A library is a place for students to learn. Learning has an open relationship with ideas. Ideas need space to run wild. All the resources in the world will not help a person deprived of ideas. The Hunt Library equips the modern student well. It is still upon the students who use it to make sense out of the technology made available.  

Hunt Library is for makers to tinker — their sandbox. Paul Graham talks about makers in his book Hackers & Painters, pointing out the importance of playing with your subject constantly, improving it, giving it shape  —  very much like a painting gradually made from incremental strokes. 

As much as I admire the thought given to makers, I cannot miss the lack of it for thinkers — historians, philosophers, archaeologists and the like. Modern thought will require reinvention of the places of learning. It will require catalysts that encourage thought.

Hunt Library brings no reinvention in that aspect. There are books that contain thoughts and ideas of people just like any library. Technology needs to be used to showcase thoughts.

It is time we find a substitute for the book. Instead, we just make newer robots that help us keep more books. Technology needs to be used to do new things and not find newer ways to do the same thing. 

I am an engineer. The Hunt Library is my brand new study room with enough gadgets to keep me drooling. But ask a true engineer and they will tell you that the most important things in technology are not technical. 

I am still looking for my reinvention of learning — a truly new library.