[Sigiii-l] Plaza

[Nadia Caidi]

Hi All,

I have asked students who are taking my 'Information and Culture in a 
Global Context' course to lend themselves to the Global Information 
Village Plaza exercice. You may see a stream of position statements in 
the next week or two.
Here is contribution #1 (some requested to remain anonymous, others 
signed their contribution).
Best,
Nadia

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What in your opinion will be radically changed in your professional life 
and in your personal life as a result of the globalization of the 
information society?

The globalization of the information society will increase, as more mass 
data is made accessible to the common household. However society is not 
necessarily the better informed the faster and more capable it becomes 
at delivering information. As the multiplicity of contradictory points 
of view and sources become overwhelmingly voluminous, selectivity and 
filtering become key. The typical current receiver chooses which tidbits 
to read and believe. This favours the special interest group driven 
western democracies whose corporate mass media has the greatest ability 
to disseminate information. They will continue to be one of the greatest 
influencers of public opinion.

In a world where anyone with access to a computer can post information 
on free web pages, be it news, poetry, fictional stories, or political 
discourse, conventional information providers find themselves squeezed 
and must specialize to survive. Print magazines diminish as e-zines 
increase. Even the book market is changing dramatically. Total books 
sales are up but with fewer titles. Publishers focus on a few well-known 
authors instead of risking their time on new writers. Will e-books 
replace books? Does this foreshadow the end of print material?

All this should eventually have an interesting effect on libraries and 
archives in general. With the large amount of new information being 
directly turned out in electronic media, will the libraries begin to 
catalogue and store this data? Would it not make sense for libraries to 
eventually store all materials entirely as electronic media? This would 
not only save on costs in virtually every conceivable way, from 
buildings, staffing and maintenance or more, but also allow multiple 
users to access the same materials at the same time. But what will that 
mean for society? Will it encourage a more in-depth approach to 
information gathering, or require a new kind of librarian-client interface?