Abstract
The information benefit provided to the general public by the developing telecommunications systems will be highly dependent upon the provider's perception of the current and potential role of information in the ordinary interests of life. Assessing this role cannot easily be done by standard questionnaire or survey methods because information does not have a conscious function in people's lives. Some paradigms from the past and present may, therefore, be of use in articulating the everyday importance of information.
Highlights
It can be stated that a library-application software package has been successfully transplanted from one institution to another, from one hardware environment to another, and in doing so has matured into a fuller and more flexible system, which it is hoped will, in turn, benefit other libraries contemplating the automation of their acquisitions operation
I suggest that this trend toward information experts is inimical to a democratic society because of the dependency it creates and because of the pervasivehopelessness it engenders in the public mentality regarding matters as diverse as appliance repair and politics
One might view time as a delineator of freedom, as we often say: "If only I had enough time." The absence of the time found in simpler societies, the temporal pressure cooker of today where one's days off are filled with running one's personal business, suggests we have lost much of this temporal freedom
Summary
I suggest that this trend toward information experts is inimical to a democratic society because of the dependency it creates and because of the pervasivehopelessness it engenders in the public mentality regarding matters as diverse as appliance repair and politics. This process , in a milieu of rapidly developing technology, may seem irreversible. The flat-rate manual is a packaged set of information targeted on a specific range of problems, and can function as an imperfect paradigm for what information development commensurate to technological development should be.
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