Introduction to the Topic - Evolving Global Information Infrastructure and Information Transfer - page 4

formation and communication technology advances, without corresponding ana-
lysis of the underlying subsystems of information transfer.
This topic provides an explanation of the rapidly changing, complex flow of in-
formation in the context of culture, policy, technology, and economics. The influ-
ence of society and culture on information transfer is examined in Chapter 3. We
examine the information and knowledge infrastructure: those human and techno-
logical networks that support information creation, production, dissemination, and
diffusion in the promotion of learning and effective use of information in society.
In so doing, we recognize the evolution of information in society from the time
before the invention of the printing press, which we designate “Information Transfer
1.0.” We designate the age of print from Gutenberg (ca. 1450) until the widespread
use of the Internet (ca. 1990) as “Information Transfer 2.0”; the digital age that ac-
tually began with the invention of the personal computer and spawned widespread
use of the Internet, we call “Information Transfer 3.0” (see Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Evolution of Information Transfer
Understanding the Digital Age
The above timeline correlates with the general belief in Western society that the
advancement of civilization is bound to the advancement of knowledge. This be-
lief is based on the powerful notion of “progress” through scientific achievements.
Humankind has been on this journey since the Renaissance—a journey of mod-
ernization and the betterment of the human condition. Progress was the result
of a series of scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts. Thomas Kuhn (1970) ex-
plained how scientists work and change their viewpoint, resulting in a paradigm
shift. Schwartz and Ogilvy (1979) traced the evolution of theories in disciplines and
how we change our belief systems, providing a list of characteristics that describe
the emergent paradigm. Capra (1996) took an ecological view to let us see societal
systems through a web of relationships, which helps in conceptualizing information
transfer from a systems perspective. The concept of paradigm shifts in society is
explored in Chapter 2.
It is the authors' belief that the system's perspective is the most viable model
in understanding and navigating the information transfer processes and environ-
mental context. We trace the evolution of information transfer from the Gutenberg