Big Brother is Watching Your Information

Big Brother is being blamed for trying to control people and their information. This isn’t from George Orwell’s classic 1984, but how the world is not handling and deciphering information. Chapter 8 of The Anarchist in the Library, Siva Vaidhyanathan’s clearly displayed a distain for government agencies trying to control information.

Vaidhyanathan also addresses topics in this 8th chapter over the perfect library, the real library, the information elite, and the power anxious. The perfect library touched on the belief that information should be free and easily accessible for anyone, anytime. In this utopic attitude, the abusers of information make ample use and use it to harm others, businesses, and the social fabric of the given culture. Vaidhyanathan also addresses the USA Patriot Act and how it monitors electronic communication, which could hurt libraries and librarians’ beliefs. The real library setting which many people in this class understand is a little different than the “perfect library” setting. A real library tries as hard as it can to relay information in various mediums with certain restrictions on who and how individuals get that information.

At the end of Vaidhyanathan’s article he states the need for a republican model of information distribution. I could not agree more with this statement. The future of information depends greatly on how it is collected, stored, and disseminated. If information is dependent on governmental or organizational authorization, how accurate of information can it be? How can regulated information serve the greater purpose and allow individuals the option of making their own choices? These questions we must answer soon for if we don’t, the affects may be irreversible.

The second item on the reading list this was an article Memex at 60: Internet or IPod by Richard H. Veith breaks a part a 1945 article in which Vannevar Bush makes predictions on technologies. Veith states the original predications and how these predications have lead to many different variations. Veith describes how the original idea of a Memex (memory extender) would be something similar to an IPod. There are many similarities to the Memex idea and an IPod. They include: easily used, can accommodate large amounts of data in a very small space, owners can build very personal collections, etc.). Veith states that over the years Memex integrity has been scattered in various articles and has been compared to items of no similarity. This brings up an interesting topic, how safe is information from misinterpretation? This question, I really do not have the answer to, but I believe it stems from individuals going off of previous knowledge or past information on certain topics and formulating ideas and concepts around the knowledge and information even though it may not be accurate.

Two completely different topics with one common theme, information dissemination; one case information is being controlled by the government and the other is being completely misinterpreted. We as information professionals need to help stop these information meltdowns and allow for greater information gathering and loosen the control of information. It is now in our hands, but the questions are, how can we change it and will we?