Like with everything else, I would like to take philosophical approach to information technology. While information technology as the name suggests, provides information when is needed, there is a risk of information overload and I really wonder if that is useful? When recent economic crisis started to unfold 8-9 months ago, I think that the media has done great disservice and made the crisis worse by bombarding us with information and reports from countless analysts about the state and the future of our economy. In my opinion very few of those analysts have a clue what they are talking about.
I think that information should have some useful purpose or otherwise there is no point for information to exist at all. Information generated by the media in the above example had almost no useful information and therefore I think it should not exist, since it reflect speculation of certain group of people while provides no useful information. On the other hand, the media is using technology (including information technology) to spread their message across the globe thus creating more damage than good (because they have ability to do so). So my conclusion for the week 1 is that the information technology should be used in the service of information and the information should not be used in the service of information technology.
I agree but the challenge is filtering out information without useful purpose. Who is going to decide? How is that going to happen? There are many question re: practicality.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter spends hours on Facebook sending what you and I consider as worthless information. But from her perspective and that of her friends, the information is very valuable!