InformationAccess_Culture



**__The Effect of Information Access on Culture__ **
 ** Introduction ** Information access, as it is today, plays a vital role in the new economy, and has major implications on culture and society today. In this report, we plan to look at the effect of information access and its relation to culture. By looking at the opportunities and drawbacks of information access, we plan to explore the concept of the digital divide to further understand the impact of information access on culture. The major implications of information access and the digital divide will then be used to examine the role it plays on the new economy and in cultures and societies today.  In the denotative sense, culture can be defined as the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization. It is through culture that we are trained to associate certain values and emotions to certain situations (Cooper, Calloway-Thomas, & Simonds, 2007). Today in Western culture, we have grown so used to accessing information on the internet. Our access to the internet has almost become an addiction for many users in Western cultures. No longer are we restricted to merely accessing the internet from our desktop computers, but we can access it mobile from our laptops, and now, even from our cellular phones. Our culture is being dominated by the craze of having to access information, and having to access it immediately. Weinberger argues that the internet has made us more impatient, and one second on the web, is different from actually expensing one second in the real world (Weinberger, 2002).
 * Information Access and Culture **

Access to the internet has totally redefined our culture to the point where we actually even incorporate web terms to our everyday vocabulary in conversations. The internet is truly a phenomenal tool with tremendous power. A tool that is truly capable of redefining culture in both good and bad ways. Prior to access to the internet, in a case where we are researching information, an individual would actually have to physically go out to locate a book or some other form of medium that contains relevant information that we are looking for. But now, in an information age, we can log on to the internet, access a virtual library, access electronic sources each containing various types of information, and all this can be done without having to even traverse any distance physically, all of this could be done simply at the few clicks of the mouse (Weinberger, 2002). Information is easier for us to access, and in our culture, we have grown used to notion of having information so easily accessible. A drawback of having so much information always around though, is that we are slowly becoming an ‘infoglut’ society, a society where we are overloaded with information (Gauntlett & Horsley, 2004). Its impact on our culture has made it increasingly difficult to sort between information that is relevant and not. With having information so easily accessible and such vast amounts of information, we are finding ourselves overloaded with knowledge concerning the latest celebrity gossip, rather than utilizing information that could be better manipulated. This notion raises the question on how do we even know what information is important and relevant? What is it about information that makes it relevant?

To look further into the problem of information access, and its impact on culture, we plan to examine and analyze the notion of the “digital divide”.  __Background and History __ The term digital divide was initially used to refer to the gaps in the ownership of and access to a computer (Wikipedia, 2009). But now as more users in Western societies have greater access to technology, the term has shifted from its traditional use. The shift may be attributed to the decreasing cost of technology, and the increase of computing power over the past few years since the rise of the Internet. Moore’s Law asserts that computing technology will double and the cost of production will fall in half every 18 months (Gauntlett & Horsley, 2004). With this occurrence, computer access is more affordable for users.
 * Digital Divide **

The affordability of computing technology has not extended to all societies and culture, and as described by the digital divide, considerable gaps still exist between cultures in the access of information. While many users were able to connect to the internet in other societies, and access vast amounts of information on the World Wide Web, many users in countries suffering from the digital divide were unable to do so due to unequal amounts of access. As internet access came to be seen as a central aspect of computing, the term digital divide evolved more to encompass the unequal access in cultures to information technologies and to access to the Internet (Wikipedia, 2009).  __A Prevailing Problem in Culture __  The digital divide, becoming a prevalent problem in many third world countries and societies plagued by the lack of information, described the inequalities between groups of people in the ability to use information technology fully (Wikipedia, 2009). The digital divide was not only a case of unequal information access, but as described by Lisa Servon in 2002, it was as “a symptom of a larger and more complex problem -- the problem of persistent poverty and inequality" (Servon, 2002) . Without the proper infrastructure, it is impossible for countries and societies who lack the necessary resources, to create equal access to information for individuals situated in such cultures. It is a growing concern that individuals situated in these cultures, which are unable to adapt to the growing changes of the Information Age, may be socially excluded as thriving economies have an increasing demand for knowledge workers (Wikipedia, 2009).

The problem of the digital divide is not just one where individuals are not provided with sufficient access to information technologies, but, extends unto the recognition that the “potential of the Internet to improve everyday life for those on the margins of society and to achieve greater social equity and empowerment” (Wikipedia, 2009). The internet and information access has created enormous educational opportunities. Cultures not affected by the digital divide, are able to access the vast amount of educational resources online, and more increasingly, we are see educational institutions utilizing the internet in creative ways. But the digital divide, still a thriving problem for several countries, makes it difficult for individuals to seek information, and gain access to it. Another growing is that, in cultures where electronic sources are becoming more dominant, and articles are only available electronically, how do we solve the problem of providing access to individuals who would otherwise be excluded. The variety of functions that the Internet can serve for the individual user makes it “unprecedentedly malleable” to the user’s current needs and purposes” (Wikipedia, 2009). But the problem of the digital divide is creating access to all, and to make it possible for all cultures to be able to use information technologies to their benefit.  In the New Economy, productivity is derived from the application of knowledge. The New Economy is focused on knowledge-intensive applications of digital technologies (Benick, 2009). But the implications of the lack of information access and the problem of the digital divide, certain parts of the population have substantially better opportunities to benefit from the New Economy than other parts of the population (Nielsen, 2006). To create better access to information, societies need to focus on better and proper development of infrastructure to support an economy that thrives on information. Today in our economy, we are seeing increasing demands for knowledge workers, and technology assuming varying roles in education, business, and finance. Information access has to be equal and accessible to all if we plan to solve the digital divide, and create equal opportunities for different cultures and societies. 
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', 'serif';">Information Access Implications **

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