Infocentrism
Infocentrism is the belief that access to information is all that is needed to solve complex social problems. Infocentrism has joined technocentrism and capitalism int he new world religon's holy trinity of "isms." Inforcentrism is particularly prevalent in public education, which enjoys a long history as the whipping boy for public criticism and a constant target for social reform.
The Social Life of Information speaks out against rampant infocentrism. The authors of SLI caution us that the myth of information "is overpowering richer explanations," (35) and that we must retain a view of the human context in which technology operates and information is used.
Tools designed without understanding the context in which they will be used are at best ignored by those who are supposed to use them. At worst, they become a hindrance to their users that must be negotiated. (7) The authors make the wry observation that although technology is supposed to solve society's problems, it is more often the other way around.
Negroponte
It seems fitting that the authors called out Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital in particular. Negroponte heads the One Laptop Per Child project, which intends to "revolutionize how we educate the world's children."
He can be described as the archetypal infocentrist. Negroponte is famous for describing bits as "the fundamental unit of information." He opposes bits to atoms, which he calls the fundamental unit of matter. Negroponte believes that the OLPC project can eradicate global poverty by providing children with universal access to information.
India
Recently, India's HRD ministry rejected the OLPC initiative on technical, social, and financial grounds. They argued that Indian children should not be used as guinea pigs in studying the longterm effects of laptop computer use by children. They also argued that it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents.
Perhaps the Indian Department of Human Resource Development read SLI?
Unintended Consequences
The law of unintended consequences is a recurring theme in The Social Life of Information. The authors describe "technologies that create as many problems as they solve." (3)
A recent article by Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes highlights the unintended consequences of the seemingly-innocuous SETI@Home project. SETI@Home is a large distributed ocmputing network where people volunteer their spare CPU cycles to assist in combing radio waves for signs of extra-terrestrial life. SETI@Home is the world's largest public-resource distributed computing project.
In his article, Gomes insists the millions of spare CPU cycles that fuel SETI are being wasted. He argues that it would be wiser to apply them to a more meaningful problem such as global warming. Gomes exhibits just the sort of skepticism advocated in SLI. SETI users have not examined the ramifications of their involvement in a social context.
I would like to take Gomes assessment one step further:
I agree SETI user's cycles could be better spent investigating global warming.
Has anyone considered how much SETI's massive electricty requirements have actually contributed to global warming?
I applaud Gomes and the Indian HRD for considering the social context in which technology will be used as advocated in SLI.
A few more "harmless" projects like SETI, and perhaps there wont be any humans left to answer extraterrestrial radio signals when they finally reach the earth.
The Social Life of Information speaks out against rampant infocentrism. The authors of SLI caution us that the myth of information "is overpowering richer explanations," (35) and that we must retain a view of the human context in which technology operates and information is used.
Tools designed without understanding the context in which they will be used are at best ignored by those who are supposed to use them. At worst, they become a hindrance to their users that must be negotiated. (7) The authors make the wry observation that although technology is supposed to solve society's problems, it is more often the other way around.
Negroponte
It seems fitting that the authors called out Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital in particular. Negroponte heads the One Laptop Per Child project, which intends to "revolutionize how we educate the world's children."
He can be described as the archetypal infocentrist. Negroponte is famous for describing bits as "the fundamental unit of information." He opposes bits to atoms, which he calls the fundamental unit of matter. Negroponte believes that the OLPC project can eradicate global poverty by providing children with universal access to information.
India
Recently, India's HRD ministry rejected the OLPC initiative on technical, social, and financial grounds. They argued that Indian children should not be used as guinea pigs in studying the longterm effects of laptop computer use by children. They also argued that it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents.
Perhaps the Indian Department of Human Resource Development read SLI?
Unintended Consequences
The law of unintended consequences is a recurring theme in The Social Life of Information. The authors describe "technologies that create as many problems as they solve." (3)
A recent article by Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes highlights the unintended consequences of the seemingly-innocuous SETI@Home project. SETI@Home is a large distributed ocmputing network where people volunteer their spare CPU cycles to assist in combing radio waves for signs of extra-terrestrial life. SETI@Home is the world's largest public-resource distributed computing project.
In his article, Gomes insists the millions of spare CPU cycles that fuel SETI are being wasted. He argues that it would be wiser to apply them to a more meaningful problem such as global warming. Gomes exhibits just the sort of skepticism advocated in SLI. SETI users have not examined the ramifications of their involvement in a social context.
I would like to take Gomes assessment one step further:
I agree SETI user's cycles could be better spent investigating global warming.
Has anyone considered how much SETI's massive electricty requirements have actually contributed to global warming?
I applaud Gomes and the Indian HRD for considering the social context in which technology will be used as advocated in SLI.
A few more "harmless" projects like SETI, and perhaps there wont be any humans left to answer extraterrestrial radio signals when they finally reach the earth.
posted by plieb at 12:59 PM
1 Comments:
Good points. And I like the idea of infocentrism. Ever since Richard Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety I have felt that only the very naive could believe that "more information is better." Tufte makes a good case that unless information design is carefully thought out, our attempts to represent information become disinformation, with enormous consequences. The big value, in my view, is in the people who can filter some body of information and provide what is timely, significant, and relevant when it is needed. Just enough and no more!
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