I'm sure you've all heard the parable that if you give a room full of monkeys a bunch of typewriters, in time, one of them will bang out the works of Shakespeare.
It's been used to describe various aspects of the Internet, usually to mock it, especially with the idea that most of what is online are the monkey's non-Hamlet rejects. But it leads one to wonder: which non-"Hamlet" draft did the monkeys themselves like best?
In "Information and Equity" Lievrouw and Farb conclude that to achieve some degree of equity, information professionals should "develop the ability to interact with diverse individuals and groups so that they can facilitate, broker or navigate those groups' various interests and practices -- again, to achieve whatever people may value doing or being, in whatever contexts and to whatever degree people consider important. Information practice should include not only indentifying and accessing existing resources, and teaching people to be 'users' of those established resources; it will also require the ability to recognize and bring into play a heterogeneous range of social, cultural and documentary information resources -- interpersonal and family networks, informal links among experts, and sources of local and universal knowledge."
The question I have is: If access and education were unversally available (and yes, that's a big if with lots of issues in and of itself, but is encouraged earlier in L&F's 'implications' section ) why wouldn't this just happen on its own? If so, shouldn't the question be "how can information professionals get out of the way?" A libertarian distribution model to be sure (if you can distribute information) -- but is there any other practical way to diversify content and interest online?
By the way, try the Monkey-Hamlet thing out for yourself
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Lievrouw and Farb also stated, "Information resources are valuable only insofar as they are meaningful or useful to the people who have access to them. They ability to derive a benefit from a resource depends to a great extent on people's skills, experience, and other contextual factors." So even if access and education are universal--say, if everyone DID go to classes to receive training on using the Internet or other technology--it's still not a given that an individual's experience with information will be the same as anyone else's. Think about how you behave in your classes. Maybe there's one class you really enjoy, so you are engaged and pay attention and take notes and are able to use what you've learned when you leave that class. But maybe the person sitting next to you finds the class incredibly boring, so she doodles in her notebook or thinks about what she has to buy at the grocery store or even falls asleep. Whatever information is being presented in that class is being absorbed (or not absorbed) very differently because it is meaningful for you but not for your neighbor. There is no way to ensure that equal information is received because of individual differences between all people. However, that's not to say that providing more opportunities for training to more diverse populations couldn't have a positive impact. This is where librarians and other information professionals need "the ability to recognize and bring into play a heterogeneous range of social, cultural and documentary information resources" that could reduce certain populations' boredom with training that may have been designed without their culture in mind. By bringing in more heterogeneous resources, librarians may provide learning opportunities that fit individuals' varied backgrounds more appropriately and allow for more equitable (if not equal) information access and use.
ReplyDelete