Diving Into the Bitstream

Information Technology Meets Society in a Digital World

Barry Dumas, Barry M. Dumas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415807135
• eBook ISBN: 9781136521508
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion de l'information

Nationwide, and indeed worldwide, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of access to information. Accordingly, information technology (IT), broadly defined and its role beyond the internal workings of businesses has leapt into the social consciousness.

Diving into the Bitstream distinguishes itself by weaving together the concepts and conditions of IT. What distinguishes these trends is their focus on the impacts of IT on societies, and the responsibilities of IT's creators and users. The author pulls together important, often complex issues in the relationships among information, information technologies, and societal constructs.

The text explores a synopsis of these issues that are foundations for further consideration.

1
What's it all about?

If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.¹

Every technology has its supporters and detractors, its adopters and its repudiators, its benefits and its detriments. Information technology is no exception and just like other information technologies of the past—the telephone, the telegraph, radio, television—the newest have been accompanied by predictions as extreme as leading to the downfall of civilization and putting us on the road to paradise.

While many technologies are narrowly focused, the effects of information technology are pervasive and ubiquitous, especially since the shift from analog to digital. As a consequence of its presence, penetration, rapid growth, degree of sophistication, and even of its absence, no society is left untouched.

It is not possible to cover every aspect of information technology and society in a single book. To give you a notion of what we will explore, this introductory chapter provides synopses of issues and areas that are foundations for further consideration. Separate chapters are devoted to some of these, others are integrated within various chapters, and still others are left in this chapter as food for thought. These are noted in the discussions that follow.

Foundation ideas, condensed

… the number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do … and so in a sense it is all about potential.²

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.³

Can you imagine any social order existing without communication? Can you see yourself living in total isolation, completely cut off from any kind of contact? Not likely. Communication is a basic human need, essential to our social systems and inter actions in personal endeavors, the business world, formal and informal associa tions, political alliances, societies, governmental institutions, and every other social structure.

A social construct is anything that exists by virtue of social interactions, as opposed to objective reality. For example, such things as nations, presidents, money and language do not exist outside of the context of human social behavior. Nevertheless, they exist as integral parts of our social functioning.

(http://www.control-z.com/czp/pgs/soccon.html)

Accordingly, information—the stuff of communication—in its aspects of capture, collection, storage, retrieval, display, delivery, dispersion, and employ ment, is at the foundation of civilizations and their social constructs. It's no stretch to say that information carries with it the potential to enlighten humanity and shed light on events around the world. So it is not surprising that what is communicated to whom and how, as well as who has access to what, are critical subjects that have long been marked by investigation and controversy.

Surrounding information in all its dimensions is technology—so it's called information technology (IT). Most importantly among its other functions, IT provides the means for information to flow. Without flow, information is locked up, inaccessible, and therefore worthless. Information untouched and untouchable is invisible—it might as well not exist.

IT can be thought of in many ways: its availability, reliability, access, and control; the regulations, legislation, and oversight under which it operates; how well it protects our security and privacy; our confidence in the accuracy and completeness of the information it handles; and the ethics and principles of its intended and actual uses. These dimensions, subconsciously or directly considered or ignored, influence the IT choices we make.

Logically, we attempt to choose the best technologies for our purposes. Is best definable, even in that context? There are “10 best” lists for guidance, but they hardly ever agree because any determination depends on the personal judgment of the list makers and their definition of best. Among the many possibilities are: functional superiority; marketplace dominance; simplest to use; most commonly employed; most profitable; least costly; most trouble free; most efficient; most compatible; most attractive; or, more likely, some combination of them.

There is no universal measure, nor does there need to be. The opinions of experts, experienced users, and people we trust can guide us, but in the end we each need to make our own choices. In the final analysis, that usually comes down to what seems most appealing, for whatever personal reasons.

That helps illuminate why some technologies flourish and others founder—success defined by the marketplace. Somewhat paradoxically, technologies that blossom are not always the ones rated most highly, while some that are considered to be top notch fail to survive. Of course, many excellent technologies have triumphed and many that fail to catch on deserve that fate. Still, success also depends on more than being technologically superior—at least as important is being the products of well-run businesses. That often is enough to explain why some highly touted products have been tremendous flops even as others less lauded have gone on to considerable success. Business acumen and market insight can be the key difference-makers.

Complicating the picture is the fact that IT is dynamic, continually changing, undergoing adaptation, alteration, modification, and occasionally spontaneous mutation. Developments are impelled by such drivers of change as business, governmental, and societal demands, whose pressures determine the directions of trends as well as which technologies thrive and which fall by the wayside. This is seldom an orderly process. Jumps, sudden shifts, and quirkiness are common. What becomes the next big thing is often a surprise, even to its creators.

Moreover, while every technology embodies expected benefits and detriments in its design and intended uses, we regularly are surprised by unintended consequences, positive and negative, minimal and monumental, that result from actual uses. Some of these may be far from original purposes, which may themselves become secondary factors. How we prepare for and deal with unexpected outcomes has considerable influence on their scope and impact.

All things considered, predicting the next roaring success or how long it will last, is chancy. Ironically, choosing wisely does not always result in the wise choice. The saving grace is that nothing is forever and, with IT, timelines can be very short.

Now let's look a little deeper

In subsequent chapters we explore a variety of issues and ideas. Before we get to them, it's important to explain what we mean by the terminology we use.

Information It may be hard to believe, but there is no uniformly agreed upon definition for information. Instead, it turns out to be a rather facile term that's used with abandon. Even the well-known triad, data-information-knowledge, is not as straightforwardly defined as it appears to be.

In Chapter 2, “Information to suit—as you like it”, we compare definitions and seek a fuller understanding. We consider information sources, quality, truthfulness, validity, completeness, and accuracy. We look at biases, intentional and otherwise, selectivity, understanding, and information overload. Examples show how seemingly clear-cut data-based statements can be misleading or simply wrong.

Information technology We regard IT as being inextricably bound to humankind's communication history. The particular technologies—be they stone chisels, quill pens, printing presses, telegraph networks, telephone systems, computers, digital communications networks, and so on—are the underpinnings of the information they carry, whose creation, storage, display, and distribution they make possible.

To properly explore today's communications scene as well as what may be tomorrow's, it's important to understand something of the IT underlying them, including a look back so we may look forward. But first, what about Information and Communication Technology (ICT)? A term that has become popular in the last few years, ICT is said to go beyond IT to incorporate a variety of communications technologies—radio, television, voice and video, and so on—along with access to communications devices. IT, then, is reduced to a focus on equipment, principally computer-based equipment.

We take IT to be an inclusive and comprehensive term. IT handles information and its manipulation in all forms and formats, so communications technologies naturally fall under the IT umbrella. Furthermore, access always was an IT function. So when we refer to IT, we do so in all its dimensions; we do not make an IT/ICT distinction.

The Internet and the Web These days, when most of us think about IT, quite often the first thing that pops into our minds is the Internet, that global carrier of the roaring flood of bits that comprises so much of the information we seek and send. The Internet is the infrastructure—computers, from pocket size to mainframes; cabling and wireless distribution systems; switching and routing mechanisms; protocols; software; connection providers; and access methods—that supports the World Wide Web and all its applications.

We go online to shop, to get news, to blog, for entertainment, for advice, and so on. This kind of IT communication means connecting to sites in the World Wide Web, a process very much simplified by browsers, the visual interfaces between us and the commands that actually are executed to do our bidding.

The World Wide Web, or simply the Web, is a mélange of hypertext and data files⁴ that are chock full of the information we seek and send. Hypertext files contain links that facilitate navigation within themselves and among each other, allowing us to jump directly from place to place within a file and from file to file or to data files. Special scripts run via the browsers let us fill out forms, place orders, check accounts, and more.

Web sites, the repositories of these files, have a presence on the Internet and use it to transport information to and from us and other sites. We seek particular sites according to what we are searching for or what we are contributing to and the Internet finds them for us through an addressing system that uniquely identifies each site.

The scope of the Internet, which in essence is an interwoven information transportation structure, continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Not only is activity of Web-dependent systems and programs surging, but so is non-Web activity.

Though a major part of our Internet use is Web related, a significant amount is not. Email, VoIP (Internet voice calls), RSS feeds,⁵ podcasts, streaming audio, and ftp file transfers, among other applications, all use the Internet but not the Web. Beyond that are many non-Internet information technologies, prominent among which are cellular phone systems, ATM machines, cable and satellite TV, satellite radio, broadcast radio and TV, and their various infrastructures. All in all, it's hard to imagine a day when we do not make use of at least one IT-based service.

Since IT is a main component of this book, it appears in every chapter as part of various discussions. But because of its importance, we devote Chapter 3, “Connections —the Internet, the Web, and the others”, to multiple technologies in the IT umbrella. As major components of IT, we pay particular attention to the develop ment and structures of the Internet and the Web. We look at other communications technologies as well and also consider the two sides of the IT coin—moving information and preventing information from moving. The latter also is a subject in Chapter 4, “That is to say—free expression and privacy”.

New media, old media, mass media As a term, new media is at once informative and ambiguous. In broad strokes, media⁶ refer to such communications instruments as newspapers, television, movies, video, voice, and the like. Information is supplied by many devices in many media formats. Currently, adding new narrows the focus to those based on digital processing, distinguishing them from old media, which are based on non-digital technology.

So the term new media has come to mean the forms and functions of the vehicles that manage digitized, hence computer-based, information of all sorts—numerical, textual, images, animations, audio, video. New media have replaced some old media, have supplemented others, and stand alongside still others. Regardless, new media certainly have become the more widespread and the more impactful.

Mass media, on the other hand, refers to reach and size rather than type of technology, mass indicating a large, physically dispersed audience. The old mass media of radio, TV, movies, and print publications have far less scope than new mass media, both in terms of audience locations and sizes. Further, old media content distribution takes a considerable amount of time and is not available on demand. Digital technology and the Internet changed that. Reach is, at least potentially, global; distribution time is seconds or fractions of seconds; and availability is nonstop.

So far, so good, but we know that what is new today is old tomorrow. When humans first began to paint on cave walls, they were using what was that age's new medium to record and preserve thought. Other technologies followed, from inscribed stone tablets, to mechanized printing, to radio and television broadcasts, to audio and video recording, to movie film—all were new media of their times. Just as what we learned from those media was prelude to today's new media, so wha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• Preface
• Chapter 1 What’s it all about?
• Chapter 2 Information to suit—as you like it
• Chapter 3 Connections—the Internet, the Web, and the others
• Chapter 4 That is to say—free expression and privacy
• Chapter 5 What’s mine is whose?—intellectual property
• Chapter 6 You, me, and everyone else—alone together and vice versa
• Chapter 7 Attacks, bit by bit—from nuisance to cyber warfare
• Chapter 8 Mind and machine—artificial intelligence
• Chapter 9 We are what we do—ethics and responsibilities
• Chapter 10 The future lies ahead—we’re off to see …
• Addendum
• Additional reading
• Index