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Few today doubt that the adjective "information" reflects the current state of society nowadays.
We live in an era that is characterized by quantum computers.
We have nanotechnologies available.
We create programmable matter.
On the Internet we chat with robots and software endowed with artificial intelligence.
We can be spied on social networks.
We use television in a mobile phone, we can even take a digital library in our pocket
and have all the information together at hand.
We normally find ourselves in cyberspace in various electronic stores.
This is today's society.
Nevertheless, there is something missing in our gleaming future full of technological marvels.
Where is the common man?
Is the information society a society for everybody?
Are we all in the information society truly free?
(MICHAL LORENZ INFORMATION SOCIETY)
There are numerous definitions of information society.
Each author presents a separate definition.
We can simply state that the information society is a society
whose essence is carried out by creating, processing, mediating
or spreading information using information and communication technologies.
Where does this information society come from?
Where can we find its origin?
According to James Beniger, the origin of the information society can be found somewhere in the 19th century.
Beniger describes the development of industrial society, (JAMES BENIGER - ORIGINS OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY)
development of transportation technologies, and the crisis they caused.
The crisis lies in the fact that we are basically not able to control the movement of goods any more.
We have lost the ability to control transport technology in general.
Since we have always been accustomed to the fact that information moves as fast,
as our carriers do.
The fastest carrier -- a horse -- limited the speed of information transmission.
This, however, is not enough at the time of the industrial revolution.
The age of steam and age of steam engines are beginning to emerge.
They are, however, moving much faster and crashes of these machines
occur simpler.
One is losing track of where the train is.
Information society thus finds its expression in the Telegraph,
which allows transmitting information faster than the trains themselves can move.
We know that a train is approaching before this train really arrives.
We could say that there is some kind of mutual co-evolution of information
and transportation technologies.
And information technologies are becoming a kind of independent entity
that drives the development of our society further.
However, people did not notice the changes in society right away.
The first to notice the changes was a Japanese essayist called TADEO UMASEO.
He realized that the society has reached a new stage of development
and in 1963 he started to refer to this latest stage of development as the information society.
20 years later, computer is expanding in full in our society.
This expansion is so significant that in 1982 TIME Magazine announced computer to be the Man of the Year.
Before long the Internet arrived as well.
With the support of ARPA, the Internet is developed as a communication academic network (KATIE HAFNER -- WHERE WIZZARDS STAY UP LATE)
as well as a military communication network
and thanks to the subsequently developed service of WWW it spreads throughout the entire society.
At first, individuals begin to interact with the computer in some way,
followed by entire families.
Gradually, a variety of specialized institutions start to be formed,
thus meso level is influenced which ultimately affects even the whole economy,
all politics as well as culture.
Then the macro level, holistic level of our society.
Information wants to be free. (J.P.BARLOW -- DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF CYBERSPACE)
This is how A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is introduced to the society
as presented by John Perry Barlow.
Internet is a kind of space to communicate freely, to exchange views,
to share information and to open a bit of brighter future for the society,
hope that we will turn a little more free.
The Internet, nevertheless, is not only a source of entertainment a source of communication.
It is becoming a tool of trade.
Thus Internet is becoming more and more colonized by the commercial sector.
Each of us today shops in e-shops, for example.
State bodies aim to ensure these deals to be secure and trusted.
Hence, various regulatory and control mechanisms start to be developed to ensure safety
of all the Internet commerce.
The Internet is thus getting under a kind of management, it starts to be monitored.
At the same time, more and more restrictions on accessing information and various services occur.
People initially thought that the Internet has no boundaries.
Cyberspace has no physical borders as states do and therefore it cannot be strictly controlled by these states.
However, states are finally finding mechanisms how to control the movement of information within their territory
using intermediaries, and it can now commonly happen
that you want to watch a YouTube video,
however, you get a notification that THIS VIDEO IS NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR COUNTRY
SORRY ABOUT THAT.
State control is partly commercial, but also often ideological.
A suitable example is the control of Internet communication, such as in China,
where there are information intermediaries and providers controlled in order
to provide only such information that meets the requirements
of the governing political class.
Similar examples are also known, for example, from France where buying Nazi
promotional patches and materials is prohibited, but which are commercially available, for example in the USA,
and then it can be controlled that such goods cannot get freely to France.
Effective means how to promote online business,
is user interface.
User interface is a tool that facilitates consumption of tradable information.
It aims to make using a computer as easy as possible and hand in hand with that
the ability of its users to control this tool decreases simultaneously.
We are completely happy with what is displayed.
We do not understand the principles how the information is retrieved,
how the information, that we insert ourselves in the search,
are further used and how they are handled.
We thus do not understand the principles and practices how a computer itself and the search processes work.
Rushkoff warns us.
If we are not able to program and use this tool, i.e. computer, (DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF -- PROGRAM OR BE PROGRAMMED)
only passively, we ourselves are subject to programming.
We are becoming a kind of passive consumers of information.
We are easily impressionable.
We are no longer creators, we are only e-consumers.
Our freedom, our creativity, is then only an illusion and we absorb information
that are displayed to us, god knows how and where form, to believe them.
Problems with programming information tools are not the only ones
plaguing the information society.
Our information society struggles with numerous barriers to become really effective.
One major obstacle is the issue of discoverability.
With the ever increasing amount of information, the so-called information explosion, it is increasingly difficult
to find the information relevant and necessary for us
in the expanding information space.
Another problem is the organization of information.
How to organize information on the Internet to keep them clear,
easily discoverable, simply verifiable so that we can find out
that this information is actually reliable, not just a piece of fiction.
In such a wealth of information that is generated by the information society,
we have to deal with the obstacle redundancy of information.
Some authors even talk about living in a time of information or data smog.
What creates this smog?
We can talk for example of disinformation,
which is false and untrue information. (DISINFORMATION)
We also talk about factoids, which is information (FACTOIDS)
difficult to decide whether they are true or false.
This package also includes exinformation, thus the data that we collect, (EXINFORMATION)
and store on various media, but do not work with them any further, do not process them.
Basically, we only store them.
For example, NASA collects a huge amount of information from space,
but none further reads this information and works with them.
They are stored for later.
Finally, we also find exoinformation. (EXOINFORMATION)
This is information that a variety of cameras and sensors collect about us.
They record our movements, our behaviour and basically that is how they are becoming
a kind of tool to control the whole society.
The result is a threat that the information society will turn into a supervised society
controlled by the "big brother".
While being immersed in a wealth of information, we are missing on one important fact.
Benefits of the information society are not for everyone.
They are not equally available to all.
This creates a new inequality.
Inequality, which we call digital divide. (PIPPA NORRIS -- DIGITAL DIVIDE)
We can then distinguish people who are information-rich and information-poor.
Whereas, this divide has a kind of three different aspects.
The first one is the DIVIDE IN ACCESS.
That is the gap that arises between people who have access to modern technologies
and those who do not.
So they either get to new information or they do not have the opportunity to access them in digital form.
The second type of this gap is the DIVIDE IN USAGE.
The gap in usage involves people who live in rich countries.
However, they are not interested in technologies.
They are afraid of them, repelled them, so they essentially refuse to use them
for gathering information.
They refuse to use them in their daily lives.
And then there are people who have a problem with competencies. (DIVIDE IN COMPETENCIES)
For example, a problem to get orientated in the amount of information that surrounds them.
To find reliable information, credible, relevant.
This is all a matter of information literacy.
However, neither the information literacy is distributed in our society equitably.
Some people have higher quality education and some lower quality education.
Someone does not come across information literacy throughout their studies, because it is not included
into the school curricula.
Some people also lack abilities.
They may have problems with algorithmic thinking.
They may have trouble applying mathematics, problems with deduction.
The lack of these capabilities then limits a man, although the technology is at hand.
Another problem that relates to this issue, is that our brains are not ready
to handle larger and larger amounts of information.
Within the last millennium, our brain has not fundamentally changed.
So we have a very similar capacity for information processing as our ancestors
who have never come across information and communication technologies.
In this case, we are talking about the divide in quality use of information.
Some individual living in the information society are so immersed in virtual worlds
that they fail to perceive the real world.
In fact, we could say that they focus on the whole life cycle of a piece of information
and consume it, however, they do not focus so much on life cycle of information carriers,
technologies, whether computing or mobile.
Yet their consumption and their production create a problem that is in today's society
referred to as "e-wasting," (RAFAEL CAPURRO -- E-WASTING)
or electronic materials wasting.
We do not trace where the technologies, that we normally use, come from
and where they disappear.
They come to us via stores, then we dispose of them by throwing into rubbish
and we expect that they will be recycled.
We are not aware that many people in the third world in inhuman conditions by very difficult methods obtain
precious metals, which are an integral part of these devices.
Quite often for minimum wage in extremely cramped conditions
that affect their health and life.
Similarly, we exchange technologies that we have exhausted or that have become old-fashioned,
for newer ones.
We get rid of the old ones, and these old technologies are not processed directly in the countries
which produced them, but they are placed in the third world countries,
where they are dumped on the beaches and offered to the poor,
to rummage through them, pull out all sorts of recyclables
and quite often at the expense of their own health to recover precious metals and substances,
to sell them back.
We can therefore say that our illusory freedom in the information society is redeemed by suffering
of others who are not part of this society.
It turns out that information technologies and information contain a kind of power dimension in them.
They create people who are the winners and those who are the losers.
They empower inspectors of technologies and the rest of users are controlled by these technologies.
As users must adapt to the technology.
The only one who does not need to adapt to the technology, is the one that pays for it,
who orders and for whom the technology is designed.
The others have no other option but to learn how to work with the new technology,
adapt their accustomed style of work to it and only then their job is safe.
How can we answer the questions posed in the beginning?
Is the information society a society for everybody?
No, it is not.
Is the information society a free society?
It fails to bring us the dreamt-of freedom.
We can then continue to ask ourselves.
Can we change this situation?
And if so, how may we contribute to this change?
The answer could be a new trend in the development of information and communication technologies
which we refer to as community informatics.
(COMMUNITY INFORMATICS)
Community informatics builds systems, that do not use information as an output
with some added social value, economic value.
The information in these systems serves as a resource which is available to all people in the community
and is somehow adapted to this community, whether it is a work community,
neighbourhood community, or interest-related community.
People in this case do not have to adapt themselves to the technology, but the technology
is adapted and tailored to them directly.
This returns to power back into the hands of people who use the technologies.
It boosts their intelligence that is not used for decision-making of power elite,
but is also used for decision-making in all layers of the community.
The power gets to the edge of the community.
Rather than by competitive, these systems are collaborative.
Rather than hierarchical, they are participatory.
Thus they allow people to participate in their construction.
They are not concentrated, but rather distribute all the advantages
equally among the entire community.
Rather than a passive approach, effective use is preferred.
User is the focus point instead of the process which should lead to greater economic efficiency.
The focus is also on a common life and needs of people within the community.
Rather than global impact, local context is therefore monitored using these technologies.
The resulting information systems are then much more democratic than the existing systems.
To whoever is interested in this issue, I highly recommend the book by MICHAEL GURSTEIN -
WHAT IS COMMUNITY INFORMATICS?
THE VIDEO WAS CREATED WITHIN THE PROJECT: CENTER OF INFORMATION EDUCATION: DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION LITERACY AT MU, PROJECT REG. NO. CZ.1.07/2.2.00/28.0241.