ASU East

TWC494/598: Infoglut Deal With It
Multimedia Writing and Technical Communication
Spring 2005

Course Introduction

"The 'information explosion,' about which so much has been said and written, is to a great extent an explosion of misinformation and badly organized information. Yet we hear much more about how to disseminate the available material and transfer it from one medium to another than about how to separate the wheat from the chaff and extract meaningful conclusions. The digital revolution has only made the problems more acute."
--Murray Gell Mann, "Information versus Knowledge and Understanding", 1995


"InfoGlut" is a course about information. Although we will be talking about technology and other issues, the focus of our discussions and work will always be contextualized around information: its organization, retrieval, dissemination, presentation, and use.

How many times have you heard the phrases information society, information age, knowledge society, knoweldge worker, information economy, etc.? How about "information is power?" Understanding and using information is very much what our economy and society are about. And for those of you who are majors in the MWTC Program and plan to go on to become writers/communicators (whether it be in multimedia or traditional formats), being able to understand information in order to organize, format, and present it is crucial.

We will begin this semester by looking at what information and knowledge are and how they have been impacted by technology (especially the Internet and World Wide Web). We will then move on to looking at some of the issues and questions of the "information age." These include: how does media cross-ownership affect what we read or view as news? How has technology changed the way academics and other professions share and use information? How has that change affected how business is done? What is the information economy and how does it change the way business operates? Is copyright still viable in a time when information can be shared openly and widely? Who owns information, should anyone own it? How do we determine what information about ourselves is private and what is public in the electronic environment? Is filtering of information necessary in an environment where it is easily accessed?

I'd like to challenge you to think outside the box and to be open to new ideas and concepts this semester. The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 15th century profoundly changed society over time. Literacy rates increased; social, cultural, political, and economic systems changed. Many believe that the Internet is having the same impact; that it is not only a communication or distribution medium but that it has changed the way we think and interact so that current social, cultural, political, economic, and legal systems no longer work. Others believe that much of the talk about the impact of the Internet is hype and that it is really nothing more than a tool.

While much of this may sound theoretical or academic, we will attempt to make it as applicable to real world situations as possible. You all bring to this class different experience. Draw on that experience but also be challenged by what the authors of the readings have to say as well as other students.

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Page last modified: 14 January 2005