Spherical Configuration of Categories to Reflect Systemic Patterns of Environmental Checks and Balances

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There is an increasing sense of urgency in the international community. This is accompanied by an increasing sense of opportunity. The urgency relates to the perception of an ever-increasing pressure from world problems and their effects at every level of society. The opportunity is associated with the many tools, insights and resources available to society, especially in the field of information.

It is easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm and hype concerning the future 'information society', the 'global village', and the 'superhighway'. It should not be forgotten that the automobile excited the same enthusiasms at the beginning of the century but led to unforeseen impacts on the environment, on quality of life and on the marginalization of those without access to such advantages. There will undoubtedly be advantages and many are already accessible to the few. But what will be the equivalents of the proliferation of roads, noise, pollution, conflicts between public and private transport, unaesthetic roadside 'furniture', road accidents, and the like? The information revolution will engender its own 'environmental' problems as can already be seen in the invasive spread of commercial and political messages.

Even vaster quantities of information are about to become widely available. It would be a grave mistake to assume that this in itself will necessarily empower people and groups to respond more effectively to the social and environmental problems of the immediate future. The enthusiasms of many information professionals and providers tend to conceal the inadequacies of the existing tools and those which are on the drawing board.

The key challenge is whether the tools will empower people to ask more appropriate questions or whether they will simply reinforce users in the pursuit of predetermined preoccupations. Will users emerge with unforeseen answers that offer them a more integrative perspective, or will mindsets that are already endangering society simply be reinforced? There should be no illusions about the marketing of information tools in a society that will be encouraged towards the highest level of information consumption. As ever, the money is to be made in providing people with responses to their immediate, short-term needs not in challenging them to reframe their needs and their approach to information about them.

The above remarks apply as much to individual end-users as to major institutions, notably those operating at the international level.

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