Emerging Trends - Evolving Global Information Infrastructure and Information Transfer - page 162

information to recording, mass-production, dissemination, organization, diffusion,
utilization, and preservation or discarding.
Information professionals understand how technology can change each of the
information transfer processes. The traditional single author gives way to multiple
voices, fast change, and lack of control. The Internet and social media eliminate
the ability of individuals and governments to control the exchange of ideas. In the
past, new technologies like Gutenberg's printing press facilitated the mass-produc-
tion of information and new knowledge to larger audiences. Now the creation and
dissemination of information can circumvent the former gatekeepers—publishers,
broadcasters, and media producers—so that individuals with smart phones, tablet
computers, or laptops can create information packages and disseminate them
widely through social media immediately. The same media enable instant feedback
by the audience. Barriers of time, distance, and cost have been eliminated or
drastically reduced.
The models mentioned above are synthesized in Figure 10.1. The environ-
mental context influences the prevailing paradigm in society, and the interaction of
paradigm values and variables in the environmental context all influence each of
the stages of the information transfer processes. The arrows and ellipses indicate
the interactions of these variables in a very complex interaction with information
transfer, the information infrastructure. These trends are part of a much greater
wave of change, as described below.
Figure 10.1 Information Transfer