Information, technology, and human behavior.

We live in an era of information. Recent studies show that the rapid growth of the information capacity is several times larger than our ability to manage and analyze it. In the past, people had to be in direct contact with other people to get their opinions about different issues. With the appearance of modern printing and afterwards the radio and the programs that allow callers on air, we broke this basic assumption. Today we have the ability to publish any information at all without the need to print it and even without the need to pay for our words to be heard. We generate information, consume information, and gather information in capacities that were not feasible in the early days of the print. The ARPANET was, in fact, the new breakthrough in the way to the behavioral change. With each connected computer, mobile device, and tool we become more and more information dependant and our behavior indicates it. Contemplate of the difference between hearing the news by chance with a delay of several days from vagabonds to the present form of news consumption. We feel strange if the time interval between the news updates is longer than several hours. Newspapers became obsolete as news tellers in the digitized society and they still haven’t done the needed revolution to adjust. The behavioral patterns still change and from a form of getting the news by chance or in dictated hours like the newscasts, we became news consumers and we decide when we want to get updated with the news. Of course the example of the news is just a small example that emphasizes the behavioral change caused by the information. This evolving area will have significant role in the new technologies and inventions we see in the next several decades.

The main aspects of the information revolution as we experience it for several centuries already are:

1. Information management – gathering the information, stocking the information, and making it available to the designated people.

2. Information accessibility – the ways provided to access the information, to generate the information, and to influence the information and the data.

3. Information / data presentation – the means provided to view, listen and generally interact with the information.

4. Information analysis – tools to assist in filtering information, manipulate information, and provide the desired format for the consumption of the information.

The next four posts will discuss these aspects with general background information and several specific examples. These posts are crucial to better understand future progress in the field of information consumption, and the technologies that will be discussed in details in the future posts.