Current Information Environment (2015)

With technology offering limitless amounts of information at your fingertips, information has become a commodity, and with that the deprivation of information a means of control. As mentioned in my Information, Secrecy, and Control post, the government has withheld access to a lot of information. Fortunately, President Clinton tried to change to a nation with government transparency by declassifying many classified documents while in office. Regardless of Bush's attempt to revert this act by reclassifying more than 55,000 documents, and destroying.editing others to represent the government in the way he saw fit, President Obama did away with these orders, and established a National Declassification Center. 

However, the government isn't the only party interested in information control. The privatization of information and information services by corporations only benefits those who own the information. Imagine the privatization of a university, the research data would be owned by the company in control of the university. Only research furthering the cause of the owner would be funded substantially. Overall, the priorities of the corporation funding the university take precedence. 

The ALA has taken a stance  on outsourcing and privatization of information saying:

ALA affirms that publicly funded libraries should remain directly accountable to the publics they serve. Therefore, the American Library Association opposes the shifting of policy making and management oversight of library services from the public to the private for-profit sector.

The library community works with the idea that freedom to information access is an important component of their services. When a company or government with an agenda takes charge, the user may not be able to find the information he/she is looking for, as the information may be classified or even destroyed.

Relevant readings:

• Braman, Sandra. "Forms and Phases of Power: The Bias of the Informational State," Chapter 2 in Change of State: Information, Policy and Power.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009: 9-38.
• Schiller, Dan. "How to Think About Information," Chapter 1 in How to Think About Information. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006: 3-16.
• Schiller, Herbert. “Data Deprivation” Chapter 3 in Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. New York: Routledge, 1996: 43-57.