On revolutions and the 'Information Revolution'

Abstract

The so-called 'Information Revolution' is contrasted with the classical revolutions of agriculture and industry and found to be misleading because of the abstract nature of the word information. It is argued that in fact there is rather a Communications Revolution following on from a succession of prior and dramatic lesser revolutions in communication 'technologies'. At the moment, the new Communications Revolution is swamping the world with 'messages' that may or may not constitute meaningful information. It is speculated that the advent of social media and networking may eventually solve this problem of overload and make some sense out of the seeming chaos; and that there may still be a role for information scientists to play in this process.