Problem of Purpose

Steven Bell spoke at SMRLA on Friday and asked what business are we in? This reminded me of a Jan. 2000 article in D-Lib magazine on the problem of purpose, "Digital Libraries and the Problem of Purpose." http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january00/01levy.html It seems that in recent decades we've been struggling with this question and perhaps will continuously do so given the rate at which the world and technology, specifically, is changing.