Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Overview
“Complexity” is a term that best characterizes today's fast-paced, changing world.
Our culture, our values, our family structure, our educational system, our cars, the
way we communicate, the way we live—nearly every aspect of our lives—has radic-
ally changed in the last 20 years. Another way of expressing it is that this generation
is facing a much different world than previous generations.
The driving force for these changes is information and communication techno-
logy, and in this topic we provide an analysis and examples of our current society
and how information technology has changed dramatically the way we create new
information and knowledge, how we communicate it, learn from it, use it, and store
it. The dynamic, nonlinear flow and our use of information have changed our values
and belief systems and the context in which we operate.
These changes have created a world that is fast-paced and confusing. To ad-
dress the complex world swirling about us, we will explore our culture, technologies,
and flow of information to make sense of our often confusing information infrastruc-
ture.
In this chapter, we introduce an overview of our society today, using some mod-
els that provide an understanding of the many forces that have converged to create
this complex milieu. We provide a perspective of the information infrastructure and
the concomitant role of information transfer that is the driving force in shaping the
content of our culture. We also define terms used frequently and describe the pur-
pose of the topic and the audience for whom it is intended.
Introduction to the Information Infrastructure
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