Ups and Downs of the Information Age

✍ Scribed by Ivan P. Kaminow

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 81 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1068-5200
• DOI: 10.1006/ofte.1998.0261

✦ Synopsis

A satisfying aspect of contributing to research in communications is the advantages communications brings to society by promoting better understanding. Examples of individual and social benefits abound. Keeping in touch with friends and family, near and far, by telephone or Internet enriches our lives and often reduces anxiety when trouble may be brewing. We can use our credit and cash cards around the world, making travel simpler. We can better understand foreign cultures through documentary television programs, dispelling antipathy and suspicion based on ignorance. First-hand news broadcasts bring home the horrors of war, terrorism, and ethnic strife. TV reporters from CNN and other networks may be standing in rice paddies in Vietnam, the streets of Sarajevo, Bethlehem, or Belfast, or perhaps one day in the bedroom of Saddam Hussein, delivering up-to-the-minute reports. Thus, the immediacy afforded by new communication technologies has the power to eliminate much of the ignorant parochialism that has plagued the world in the past.

A key characteristic of the Information Age is that access to information channels . . . telephone, wireless, television, Internet e-mail and Web pages, automatic teller machines, credit card approval, electronic funds transfer, medical and financial databases . . . is widely available, usable, and cheap. As a consequence, we have come to rely on these channels in our every day lives . . . they are a necessity, no longer a luxury. While communication can be good, dependence can be bad. In this column, I'd like to have a look at some of the down sides of ubiquitous digital information technologies. Generally, the threats outlined below may result in the long-term sacrifice of personal liberty, privacy, and security for the sake of short-term advantage. 1 1 Some of these issues are discussed in ''The Internet and Society,'' I. P. Kaminow, Optical Fiber Ž .