Information Ecologies by Nardi and O’Day

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist to create a healthy information ecology. In fact they are often worse for the job. Robert Oppenheimer felt the pull of technology’s irresistibility. The neurosurgeons in the case study did not realize the overarching effects of the technology they were using or consider all parties involved in the ecology. And these geniuses were bested by a bunch of kids in the desert with learning disabilities.

The case though with the neurosurgeons is an interesting one. Sometimes people do not consider others when technology is introduced, but even more important maybe sometimes they don’t care. In the case of the operating room setting the physicists and surgeons clearly have more power than the nurses and anesthetists. In cases like this I can see something evolving where it doesn’t matter what the nurses say. What is best for the surgeons is best for everyone. When there is a clear disparity in power it is not hard to imagine a sort of techno-tyranny springing up.
I did enjoy their depiction of information as an ecology though. The library example was on a small enough scale to see the different parts better: librarians, patrons, and the information tools. At first I was not sure where these two authors were going with this book. I originally thought that they were attacking technology which I was a bit miffed about, but as I continued to read I realized that they were about asking questions. They exhort us to think critically about technology in our personal lives and not simply resign ourselves to the inevitability of it. Change is of course inevitable. Technology will continue to change and grow to meet our needs but we can still have a voice in how it is implemented in our lives.

One final fascinating portion of the book was the description of Neil Postman’s argument about values on page 62. He believes that we are losing our values because of the high degree of information that is now flooding us. This could be on the mark because I feel like I have a lesser degree of values than my grandparents or parents generation. But perhaps my values are still there, only different. One of my biggest values is probably toleration because of all the different viewpoints out there. There are so many different creeds, beliefs and viewpoints out there, and we are no longer isolated from them. We are exposed to them everyday because of all this information that we can now obtain. I feel then that since we can no longer hide from strange viewpoints we must at least respect everyone’s right to hold them. I think that perhaps values may have shifted some but they are still there.