History of Information with Professor Paul Duguid
I recently listened to a podcast entitled “The History of Information” with Professor Paul Duguid. Professor Duguid is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. As one of the editors of “Information: A Historical Companion” he discusses the in-depth concepts behind the vast publication.
I found the subject matter both interesting and informative if however, occasionally distracting. My mind wandered far a field at times and the content seemed to impose more questions than indeed answers in relation to the topic at hand.
Have we become institutionalised within society in our quest for copious amounts of information?
How do we distinguish where society lies within our information age? Or indeed is the information we gather an entire perspective on humankind?
Are we controlling information? Or is it controlling us?
Do we have a choice?
My list of internal questions is rising in number with every stroke of the key, unanswered, torn between ethical, social and diplomatic self-reasoning. The book deals with topics such as Algorithms, Intellectual Property, Privacy, Databases, Censorship, Propaganda, Capitalism, Inner Circles and Crisis of Democracy to name a few.
Professor Duguid refers to the passage of time and its relevance to us in the 21st century. Can we use information from the past to paint our path forward? Perhaps guild us towards a world where misinformation and disinformation no longer exist. Professor Duguid quoted Milton in saying “So truth be in the field, if truth is out there the falsehoods will be pushed to one side”. Does this comfort the millions who have been targeted online through social media scamming, online harassment, identity theft, catfishing but to name a few. Yes, we should “look over the shoulder of information” but we also need to educate the next generation so their journey through social exploits can be beneficial to society and not a mere hindrance to the minds of the future.
Are we the commodity within this rising information society that we live in? Are capitalists taking advantage of our need to communicate through social media? We are all targeted and although I feel strongly in the notion that we have a choice, the weaker members of our society are at risk and action within legislation is needed to protect the vulnerable within our society.
We spend our lives on social media. We allow algorithms to dictate our content. We are commodities. We are someone else’s intellectual property. We have no privacy and yes this is a crisis of the democracy we believe we are entitled to. We do have a choice; we can choose to abstain from social media but is this a cost we are willing to pay for anonymity? We can’t turn back the clock and although the content within the book is an interesting and intellectual look at our history it does not pave the path to our future. It does however ask us to evaluate ourselves and paint a future that is bright with the knowledge we have acquired. We can make decisions that arm us with the facts necessary to make a more informed choice for future generations.
