Abstract
We face enormous challenges with the phenomenal volume and diversity of information being generated. As the above quote indicates, however, in spite of our burgeoning capabilities to process, store, and retrieve information, we are just as quickly losing capability to maintain information permanence. In the strictest sense, evolution refers to gradual or episodic changes in a species, system, or process with time. Most people assume or will make the quick layperson's assertion that evolution involves changing for the better or improving with time. So do we have a word for something that is changing in a negative sense—that becomes worse or diminished in capability/utility with time? How about using “devolution” for a species, system, or process that is actually diminishing in “quality” or capability with time? I contend that the frenzied rush to a totally digital “information culture” is devolution, at least in the thrusts to totally abandon more permanent display, storage, and retrieval media. In fact, it is devolution at a pace unparalleled in recorded history—a recorded history that spans 50 000 years from cave paintings of early man to the present.
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