BOOK REVIEW

ET 630: DR. MARCOVITZ

DISCONNECTED: HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS IN THE INFORMATION AGE

BY WILLIAM WRESCH

REVIEW: OLURANTI TOYE DECEMBER 2004

    In this day and age, people think that lack of access to information as a thing of the past especially with the availability of mediums such as the World Wide Web and Television that anyone who seems uninformed must have made a conscious choice to be out of the loop.  I found an article which referenced an appropriate cartoon from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “One young woman, upon discovering that her companion does not own a car, a cell phone, a palm pilot, or a DVD player, exclaims, "It's just so cool how you're totally into this hip, new voluntary simplicity thing! How do you do it?" The second girl responds that she is poor. "Wow," replies the first. "I could never do that."”  The items mentioned above are technological tools that have become part of the norm in everyday activities in the lives of some people that they all can’t remember life without them while, a great number of people in the world don’t have access to these tools and are therefore, cut off from the perceived gain of these tools. These latter groups of people are known as the “Disconnected: haves-not in the information age”.

Towards the beginning of the chapter, the author introduces Mr. Schoeman and Mr. Johannes. Schoeman was introduced as being “information rich” while Johannes was introduced as being “information poor”. He then goes on to tell us that even though Schoeman is “information rich”, he still has his problems, but we might expect him to further comment that even though Johannes is “information poor”, he still has information. Therefore to establish in the mind of the readers that every one has some form of information, but the question to be asked is how much value society places on such information and how they get their information.

What is information? William Wresch the author defines it as “...An expression shaped from the very beginning by the creators of that information”. Most people tend to think of information as a thing, as objective facts that can be packaged and transmitted if people choose to do so. Also, he believes that the creators of information ultimately are the ones who determine how much there will be, how it will be transmitted and who’ll receive it to some extent. He goes on to list five different sources that generate information and they are; public, personal, organizational, professional and commercial.

The public source of information present in our society today merely reflects, unfortunately the thoughts and actions of the United States of America. This is because; sources such as television, radio, newspapers and books all have American influence and it is  through these mediums that a lot of information flows out into the world with little or nothing flowing back in, thereby, creating a lopsided one-sided information source. Besides, to have access to majority of these sources, there needs to be electrical outlets present which are out of reach to a great number of people. Therefore, even if they had a television set, with no power supply, they would be unable to benefit from it.

We should know that majority of the world’s knowledge is not in any media form, but lies in the minds of the people we see everyday. Therefore, people are a very important source of information and unfortunately, not every one has access to those people that encompass the knowledge and information they need. People who are privileged to have access to ample personal information sources are those with access either through their families, schools, churches, exposure by traveling outside their immediate environments and so on. For those who lack access to this source, they find themselves deprived of the benefits inherent in this source. Unfortunately, there are also those who intentionally prevent others from getting to some people by making them inaccessible and others those whose cultures prevent them from benefiting from the knowledge of others. Therefore, we can sum this up by saying that, “who you know determines what you know”.

The amount of Organization information available is directly affected by the market share, profit line, image and privilege afforded to institutions. They produce a sizeable amount of information but, the relevance and accuracy is often called into question.  Most organizational insiders tend to have access to more reliable information than others, who are more likely to be given misleading information.  Therefore, as a source of information that is dependable on public perception and the profit line, it tends to and should be viewed cautiously.

The output of Professional information is affected by where professionals look and where they don’t look to get their information. This output is also affected by the source of the funds available to these professionals which ultimately influences the advancements made in this information sector.

There is no doubt that there is commercial value attached to information and the normal trend these days shows that the most available information tends to be the more profitable ones. The information that people are willing to pay for e.g. names of home owners, list of students in an area, tend to be available  from a number of sources while, the information that only a handful of people at a time might need, struggles to survive.

The author brought up the question of how much information will cost in monetary values in the near future.  That we don’t know, but what we know is that because of supply and demand, the more valuable information is deemed to be, the more expensive it will be and the more inaccessible it will be to the masses.

Once we move form the problems at the source of information, we realize that we could face more problems while transmitting the information. Regardless of how much information we have available to us, we might still run into problems trying to convey them. For example, those people who are barred from receiving information because of their geographic location are voiceless in the world, because if you can’t be reached, you can’t be heard. These groups of people are very aware of their plight and know that if they are unable to connect with the outside world, there would be little hope for progress in their situations. We can therefore assume that the information was available but unable to be transmitted to some group of people because of their geographic location because the mode of transportation, be it road, wires etc wasn’t accessible to that community.

The people that oppress information and prevent it from being transmitted are often justified in their mind; nevertheless, if we want to get to the point where everyone has a chance to come to their own conclusions on issues, we need to understand that there cannot be room from information tyrannies. But, alas, we live far from this perfect world.  These groups of people are flexing their power insinuating that even though they could have access to the information, they choose not to, thereby, barring themselves and all those affected by their decision from having access to the information.

The third transmission problem addressed in the book was about the Information Criminals who tend to misuse information they come across. This makes more people reluctant to provide accurate information and making themselves unavailable on public networks because of their perceived vulnerability. Thus the information criminals have succeeded in reducing the amount of reliable information available to.

If we are able to overcome the problems at the source and transmitting ends of information, we still might hit road blocks at the receiving points. This is because, regardless of how much you would love to gain certain information, if you don’t have network to support the information style you want, you wouldn’t get it. For example, no matter how much a student loves the economy, with no training on financial markets they might never understand the stock market! The world of education plays a large role in the types of information we are able to receive. Once we understand the need for basic literacy amongst citizens because lack of it prevents multitudes from being able to access and utilize various types of resources, we would also realize that there is an urgent need to address the education levels around the world. I believe that like the various protocols around like TCP/IP, there should be standards for educations that ensures that even those with the most basic levels, can still use basic tools available to obtain whatever information they choose to.

To understand how information works is to understand that the terminating point of any “information pipeline’ is a person so, the information is further being subjected to the cultural bias of the person. Everyone has a schema by which they view life and this is how people determine what information is valuable and which isn’t. So, essentially, if we are unable to ensure the reliability of information, protecting it from the different preconceptions of people, we would always have incomplete information available to the world.

The final barrier addressed by the author on the receiving end of information was noise. Noise is defined as any sound that is unexpected and undesired at a particular time. Noise could be strategically or unintentionally placed in the path of information, but, regardless of the reason, it succeeds in overshadowing accurate information reception. The unfortunate thing is that people are unaware that what they’re receiving isn’t what they want but merely data occupying space. The art of ensuring that only important information is presented seems to be lost. But this begs the questions, whose call is to determine where information ends and noise begins? Since it is all subjective, there is no answer to the question. However, we can say that technology has helped ensure that the information gets to us quicker, and then the value of the content is definitely left to our individual discretion.

This book helped to develop some thought processes in my head. Why are we so concerned about equal access to technology in our society? Why can’t we just accept the reality of life that there will be “haves” and “haves not”! We see this divide everyday in education, wealth, jobs and social relationships, so why not technology?  Could the problem be that we view access to technology equal to access to information which equals power? Do we believe that? Do we believe that everyone has a right to access technology?

My current stand on the issue, which is supported by the author is that the digital divide is very real and that the technology merely highlights the inequalities already present in our society; i.e. language, education, literacy, poverty and discrimination. We need to understand that technology in itself will never get rid of the gaps in affluence or opportunity because it is merely a tool. Once we are able to view technology as the ordinary tool that it is, we can understand why everyone should have access to it regardless of their background, geographic location or economic status. A tool is a medium by which we get something accomplished and progress from one stage to another.  Since technology has become a standard, common tool of our day and age, access to it should just be as easy as other common tools of our times. These tools only ensure that everyone blessed to be living in this information age has a chance to access a “slice of the cake” when they desire and for whatever needs they have to fulfill. We can guarantee that this tool will not eliminate the inequality gaps in our society, but at least all levels of society will have access to the “information power” to change or affect their quality of life.