Information Revolution: Not All That Great, Not All That Permanent

The information revolution--a quantum leap in the amount of information generated, communicated and stored, and in the speed at which this information can be spread, and in the accessibility of this information to more people.

Let's stipulate that apart from allowing and seemingly compelling people to obsess over a celebrity's every hiccup, this information flood does some good. But there are several reasons why by itself it doesn't transform things for the better--and why (here's the true heresy) it may not last.

Why isn't all this information doing us more good? Because the technology of lying has kept pace with the information flow, and lying in public is acceptable, depending on what you want to hear. Right now FOX News is asserting that the results of a Gallup poll are precisely opposite of what they in fact are. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of percentages of people who answered a question: a fact. They are doing so repeatedly, and discussing the meaning of these poll results as they've reported them (at least according to this source.) This is hardly an isolated instance, although it is an unusually clear one.

Another reason is the refusal to accept information that doesn't come from a favored source, which could be a matter of judgment about which sources to trust, but also there is the refusal to accept information that runs counter to what one wants to hear. That's a psychological factor. Information that is abstract, that is about phenomena distant from the receiver, is all easier to ignore or refuse to believe. But people are fully capable of ignoring or refusing information about phenomena that stares them in the face, and there is a great deal of institutional support for doing so.

A major problem with the quantity of information now available is that it overwhelms the ability to figure out what it means, or even to track it. It will soon be possible to generate information on the moment to moment activities of millions of people, if it isn't already. But there is no way, not even with advanced computer programs, to pay attention to all of it. Then there is meaning. It used to be believed that mapping the human genome--collecting that information--would revolutionize medicine and life on Earth. It hasn't. It turned out to be only a starting point, with ultimate results still unknown.

But here's the biggest vulnerability of the information revolution. All of these sophisticated systems and devices depend on such clunky infrastructure as the electrical grid, which in turn depends on energy, which in turn depends on a smoothly functioning global economy. All of that amazing software is useless without the materials necessary to make the devices, which also depend on a smoothly functioning global economy. These also depend on an alert, functioning and non-deluded government to maintain infrastructure, and on political stability in this utterly interdependent world.

Right now that global economy is feeling the first tugs of what will all but inevitably be a difficult if not disastrous strain on its fragile web of prices, availability, transportation capabilities etc. The two major factors causing this strain are what's called "peak oil," or the increasing expense and diminishing stores of fossil fuel, and the Climate Crisis which is affecting food and water resources especially in the southern hemisphere, and which are factors right now in the unrest in the Middle East. These factors are not going to diminish for the foreseeable future.

Most of this information is stored in vulnerable systems that can't be accessed without the right technology. As storage mechanisms, books are far more permanent and accessible than anything coded and stored in computer systems and devices. Transmission of information is highly interdependent and insufficiently redundant. Disruptions can come from technological failures and disasters, and from the economic and social chaos that knocks the supports from under these systems.

The Internet is not invulnerable nor immortal. If that be heresy, make the best of it.