Information Revolution - Utopia or Bust?

Like the multitude of nifty gadgets and snazzy programs it has spawned, the Information Revolution has also produced a deep sense of uncertainty about the future of the world. This uncertainty has produced a brand new occupation, that of the future-tellers of the Information Age who look into their crystal monitors and tell us what the future has in store for us. These digital prophets get their writ from some obviously "higher" plane, which is not accessible to ordinary mortals like myself, for they talk very confidently and
assertively about the ominous or glorious future that awaits us.

But I look at much of this as hype, a sort of self-generated and self-perpetuated frenzy that feeds on the most basic elements of our consciousness -unbounded fear and unbridled optimism. Finding a middle path in this time of extremes is probably not easy, but I am going to try anyway.

The Information Revolution, so far, can provide us the following capabilities that were not possible before on this scale:

1) A person does not have to be physically present at a point in order to conduct his or her affairs. Notice that this automatically implies an "instantaneous" and faithful transmission of information.

2) The ability to process very large amounts of data quickly, in a non-trivial fashion without a continuous or direct intervention of a human operator. Notice that this assumes that large amounts of data can be moved quickly and without compromise. This feature allows automation of many tasks.

When we take (1) and (2) together, the Information Age allows people to construct extremely complicated information structures that can conduct complicated dynamic tasks (i.e. management of military operations, businesses, education, manufacturing, remote operations of machinery, sabotage), collect and disseminate information (remote sensing, polling, surveillence, espionage, inter-personal communications, video-conferencing, "manufacture of consent") or provide new venues of entertainment (real time games and shows, on-line trials and executions).

I have deliberately given a few (but selected) examples of the empowerment the Information Age can give to people. In all of my examples, there are two points: First, that the specific usage of the prodcuts of the Information Age are only restricted by the human imagination and practicality. There is indeed no restriction to how the lives of ordinary people can change. The second point is that this very act of empowerment is a double edged sword --like any other
technological breakthrough in human history, it can be used either to bring ease or misery to the lives of ordinary people with enhanced efficiency.

But all of what I have said so far is true only in principle. Existing realities of the world around us modify the extent to which people get empowered, the uses this new capability finds and the degree to which it forges a global community.

Let me examine a few factors that could work against a Utopian ideal of an electronic global community. I believe in a world that is united, but I also think that much has to change before that can happen.

1) The first and foremost factor is the immense disparity of wealth across the world. This fact will inevitably limit, or even preclude, the participation of the less previleged. The reasons of this are obvious, I only recount a few. First, a large scale presence of electronic devices requires the presence of an "infrastructure" (electricity, robust communication lines, technical expertise, investment capital) that is simply not present in large tracts of the
globe. Second, an equal participation of everyone requires the presence of adequate training (since the computer manufacturers continue to be very user un-friendly and non-intuitive in their products). Third, most importantly, if people have difficulty feeding themselves, why will they invest their time or money in getting hooked to the global village?

This fact alone, necessarily, gives an "incumbent's advantage" to the current heavy-weights of the Information Age. Like Microsoft, they take the initial and the largest share of the pie by being the first players and defining the standards. And unlike Microsoft there is no global body that is trying to level the playing field or reduce the ever growing disparity between the wealthy and the not-wealthy.

And who is to argue that the current dominant players will not use all means at their disposal, fair or unfair, to maintain their superiority. During the Industrial Revolution, the colonial powers used all means necessary, especially their technical superiority, to set up a system which essentially cornered all the benefits for themselves. The world is still reeling under the effects of that exploitation, with extreme disparity of wealth and power across the
globe and its resulting exploitation and misery.

It is very likely that the current industrialized nations will simply exploit their current strengths to ensure that they are the primary beneficiaries of the Information Revolution also.

2) Everyone talks of the "information age", but no one talks of the user who has to get something useful out of the thousands of terabytes of data that is available. The bottleneck in this process is the human mind who has to process all of this data. This is an example of "poverty amongst plenty". If I want to go buy something and my web-search yields three thousand places close to me, what good is it?
I still need to decide upon one and the presence of all these choices does not help. Let me give a few more specific examples:

Suppose an event happens in some part of the world. Which version of the news story should you believe? There will probably be about a couple or more out there. What if you wanted to invest in a country that supposedly has some internal turmoil. Clearly different parties have different things to gain. Who do you listen to and invest your life savings? Consider the situation in the Balkans. There is an intense media war going on, which side is giving the right story? What if you were on one side of two warring sides, who do you believe?

Take the example of Chowk. Is it possible for ordinary people to follow each and every article and discussion that is going on at Chowk without devoting a large fraction of their time to it? But what if something of substance and real importance to you is actually being said somewhere? What if it is subtle and requires thought, would people actually be able to benefit from it?

Clearly who speaks the loudest is heard by most, but the ability to speak the loudest does not imply that what that person is saying is correct.

What the Information Age can enable us to do is to communicate more effectively, but that does not mean that it will also make sense of the information around us also. It seems to me that in face of such overwhelming amounts of information, people will spontaneously and instinctively gravitate towards localized groups, sort of virtual communities, that share certain ideas. They will do so at the exclusion of other communities, so we haven't really fulfilled our dream of a global village.

3) Now let me ask the following question: Do people want to let go of their identities? The ease of communication does not imply that people will spontaneously become more accepting of everything they do not agree with. Sure, there will be more dissemination of ideas which can lead to a more homogenization of thought but then that will also catalyze the emergence of exclusivist groups, people who will look for "non-conformity".

When people say that the Information Age will wipe out nationalities altogether, is it not justifiable to ask "What if nationalities mold the Information Age in order to perpetuate themselves?"

It will help to put all of this in perspective. There have been many other "revolutions" in the past. Flight, telephones, wireless radio and television. All of them had their impact on the world, but did any of them bring unity to this fragmented world? The example of wireless and radio is very pertinent. It allowed people to communicate "instantaneously" over large distances, and facilitated a bi-directional flow of knowledge. In theory, it should have produced a global village. What we saw was far from that. The state machinery proved itself to be more cunning than any of the starry-eyed idealists, and this medium was fully exploited by everyone.

Not to descend into undue optimism or pessimism, the future is unwritten. Sure there are many factors at play over here, but clearly one is witnessing a complicated interplay of people and technology. The outcomes could be very different, a global Utopia where the world is at last united into one or a new dark age of cyber-colonialism where the influential leverage their immense clout
to perpetuate their power. The future could hold for us not only a global society where every human being becomes a contributing citizen of the globe but also a new form of apartheid where the have's enjoy the bulk of influence and the have-not's live in equivalents of futuristic "Indian reservations" without any say in their lives.