The Information Spaces of the Future Will Be Entirely Digital, and This Is a Good Thing - Case Study Example

The information spaces of the future will be entirely digital, and this is a good thing Information technology, specifically the so-called interactive digital technology, is growing at tremendous rate today and that its impact resonates virtually in all aspects of our lives. The manners in which this technology is developed and gets deployed become an opportunity for everyone and every organization. The information space, for instance, is one of the benefactors of this phenomenon. This paper will explain the proposition that the information spaces of the future will be entirely digital and that this is a good thing. Background Representing information in digital form, as opposed to the more traditional analog form, means using numbers to capture and convey the information. It has a remarkable breadth of descriptive ability, including text, audio (music, speech), video (still and moving images), software, and even shape. The National Research Council in the book called The Digital Dilemma, offered music as a clear illustration: Capturing musical sound requires describing the shape of the vibrations in air that are the sound and records capture that information in the shape of the groove in the vinyl. CDs, by contrast, capture the same information as a large collection of numbers. (p. 28) E. J. Garba elaborated in this regard by explaining in-depth the process of digitizing sound signals through time (see fig. 1). Here the analog signal is measured in time (seconds) and amplitude (voltage) and through this the sound is captured, reproduced and stored as a stream of binary numbers (BIT – Binary digits). (p. 17) Fig. 1 Sound Digitizing Process Why it Matters? In view of the digital revolution that is taking place before our eyes, there are more than enough compelling reasons for information spaces such as libraries not to stay on the sidelines but to get into the digital fray as soon as possible. Information in traditional analog forms such as movies, painting, sculptures, books, among others, are far more tightly bound to underlying physical media. These are not easily transported without their underlying medium, nor are they so easily extracted or accessed. In contrast, with the advent of the digital technology, the content becomes now largely liberated from the medium. For instance, when information is sent across networks, there is no need to ship a physical substrate; the information alone flows to the recipient. Another aspect in information space in the context of digital technology is the extraordinary increase in the amount of data that can be reproduced. The whole 30 volumes of an encyclopedia can now be compressed and digitized in a compact disc within minutes using ordinary computing technology. When information is represented digitally, access inevitably means making a copy, even if only temporarily. In addition, a standard (1.44 megabyte) floppy disk, which holds the equivalent of about 500 pages of text, takes no more than a minute to duplicate and is treated as if it were a piece of paper (e.g. routinely given away) while a CD, which holds 650 megabytes (the equivalent of 220,000 pages, or 44 cartons of paper) can be copied in 15 minutes to a blank compact disk that costs about $1.00, using equipment now widely available for PCs and costing only a few hundred dollars. (National… p. 31) In addition, digital information is very flexible because it can easily be changed. Digital information in information spaces could be easily searched and indexed and cross-indexed. A bound book is very difficult to alter and hard to search even with a good and systematic indexing in the library. But digitized materials and texts can easily be changed, say, by adding and rearranging paragraphs. The above mentioned variables revolutionized how information is stored and accessed and what is good in this development is that such change is for the better. It is inevitable primarily because it is practical, convenient and fast. Let us take the case of analog archiving in the library. Sul Lee (1997) documented an illustration in terms of how libraries increasing become faced with storage problems: an overriding issue might be storage costs. Some libraries are steadily filling up with paper at the expense of reader space. Where there is reluctance on the part of campus officials to expand the library, or reluctance on the part of state officials who do not wish to spend money on library construction, one might be forced to consider digitization (and digital storage) as a solution to paper-filled libraries. (p. 8) It is a fact that as long as analog or paper collections continue to grow at faster pace than digital collections, libraries cannot escape the high costs associated with the maintenance and handling. To underscore this point, according to a study done at Yale University, the cost of digital storage decline from $2.77 per volume in year 1 to $0.80 in year 10. (Lee, p. 8) We also take into consideration the fact that digital information spaces allows for the multiplicity of access as well as access at a distance. Information in digital form is accessible to thousands of people virtually simultaneously, because multiple users of a server can read the same material at their own individual pace without interfering with each other. This gives digital technology edge over the traditional media; a single copy of a book, for instance, can not be read by more that one or two people at the same pace at the same time. To drive home this point, we have the case of a curious business publication called Message to Garcia, with 50 million copies printed since 1899. According to Robert Wakeford (2001), it is today unread and reduced to a few copies held in national libraries. However, it has though reappeared by publication on the web, in effect making, it available to millions of readers again. (p. 5) Digital information can also be accessed by almost remotely through the Internet. This ability to access information removes the barrier posed by geographic variable, eliminating familiar limitations of information in traditional forms. As a consequence, digital information presents opportunities for access that are vastly greatly than those presented by traditional information spaces. Challenges Blueprints are already laid out to build a distributed national or international digital research collection. According to this model the responsibilities for specific parts of the global digital library would be assigned to research libraries around the world which would guarantee both the preservation of the archival record of scholarship and user access to it. (Lee, p. 13) However, such efforts in digitizing the information spaces have their own share of problems. Looking for specific information or finding colleagues working on similar topics, has always been and still is an open issue today in the infancy of the digital information space. Growing numbers of documents within Intranets and – even worse – on the World wide Web make it increasingly difficult to find appropriate information. Furthermore, how to generate an overview of the disparate data and information so that it can be analyzed, searched, summarized and visualized is problematic. (Theng & Foo 2005, p. 164) The Internet has opened the way for instant global access to information and services. However, there are important issues that must be addressed. First, as the number of information sources increases, it is nearly impossible to search the whole information space. In fact, different information providers may “sell” the same service or content; some at the same time while others at different “cost”. (Bench-Capon, Soda & Tjoa 1999, p. 1086) Secondly, integrating information from multiple sources is difficult to realize because of the heterogeneity and autonomy of sources. For instance, let us consider the data found in the web: It can range from structured (database) to semi-structured (HTML documents) to unstructured (text files and images) data. An attempt to integrate these data would require a lot of time and effort. It has been argued that most people navigating through the information spaces are those without sufficient personal experiences on the medium available but that they must make choices in the backdrop of a plethora of alternatives. In addition to the high number of choices available, these choices vary in quality. The good news is that these concerns are being addressed as we speak. Numerous programmers and organizations are working on equally numerous numbers of applications and content management systems that would enable people to filter through information in order to get specifically what they want – the relevant information. For instance, one of such systems is called the trail-based recommender system. This system is founded on the idea that recommendations can provide a manageable and useful view or filter of the whole information space and that such recommendations, based on experiences and on opinions of other people who are more familiar with a particular domain, can be the cornerstone of a database that can intelligently provide precise information. (Hameurlain, Cicchetti and Traunmuller 2002, p. 638) Conclusion All things considered, when the information spaces of the future will be made digital, it would be an entirely good phenomenon – both for the information provider and those that access them. As this paper has outlined, information spaces, archives, library administrators – they will benefit in digitizing information so as not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of analog information that are continually being produced along with the funds needed to store and maintain them. As Peter Brophy (2007) has emphasized libraries are vital requirement to promote understanding and engagement, therefore, it must not close itself to the idea of digitizing information. Digital information has radically altered the economics involved in information spaces, so to speak. This involved drastic changes in the relationships among authors, publishers, distributors, and others, to the point that some people in the equation disappears with their roles diminished if not entirely scrapped. The beginning of this future in information spaces could be seen in online publication of books, in the success of online bookstores, in new forms of contracts that govern research libraries and publishers of scientific periodicals as well as the emergence of the new breed of scholarly publications. Digitizing information spaces becomes imperative in order for content providers not to be sidelined by the increasingly demanding and sophisticated users. The ease of use of the digital technologies empowers users to easily access and discard information in a matter of seconds. Users are empowered more than ever to cause the success or a failure of an information space. To summarize, the power of digital technology applied to informational spaces is revolutionary, inevitable and good because: 1. Digital information radically changes the economics and character of information reproduction. 2. Computer networks radically change the economics and character of distribution. 3. The World Wide Web radically changes the economics and character of publication. The World Wide Web alone, wrote Abiteboul, S. and Vercoustre, A. (1999), is poised to become the universal information space when it finally achieve universality and scalability by integrating the concepts of culture, education, ability and material resources. (p. 1) The power of digital technology in relation to information spaces is perhaps best captured when Richard Wakeford likened the digital information space to the concept of the meme – a self-replicating unit - only better due to the high fidelity of its reproduction. (p. 3) It puts forward a more significant idea that digital information spaces, more than its current utility, could be a very important agent in preserving human culture. References Abiteboul, S. and Vercoustre, A.(1999). Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Springer. Bench-Capon, T., Soda, G. and Tjoa, M. (1999). Database and Expert Systems Applications. Springer. Brophy, P. (2007). Library in the 21st Century. Facet Publishing. Garba, E.J. (2004). Computer Music: Rhythm Programming, Processing and Mastering. Trafford Publishing. Hameurlain, A., Cicchetti, R. and Traunmuller, R. (2002). Database and Expert Systems. Springer. Lee, S. (1997). Economics of Digital Information: Collection, Storage and Delivery. Haworth Press. National Research Council. (2000). The Digital Dilemma. National Academies Press. Theng, Y. and Foo, S. (2005). Design and Usability of Digital Libraries. Idea Group (IGI). Wakeford, R. (2001). Visions of the Information Future. Cited in Alison Scammels (Ed.) I in the Sky. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Read More