Book review

Disconnected: Haves and Have-nots in the Information Age

By William Wresch, published by Rutgers University Press, 268 pages

By Heather Lee Schroeder, September 25, 1998

"The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.'' -- John Kenneth Galbraith

With the push to introduce the Internet and other computer goodies into every classroom, business and home reaching a fevered pitch, the viability of new technology's reach and importance needs to be reconsidered.

Is it really a crisis that fewer American college students are choosing computer science over the humanities? What are the ramifications of a technology that has the potential to isolate and alienate its users? Can technology solve all of humanity's problems?

It's clear the issues raised by computers, computer technology and, more fundamentally, of information, need to be examined thoroughly and responsibly by a society wherein so much is being redefined so quickly.

When it was first published in 1996, William Wresch's "Disconnected: Haves and Have-nots in the Information Age'' was a bit of a groundbreaker. After all, here was an esteemed professor at UW-Stevens Point -- who headed the university Computer Information Systems program, directed Total Quality Management teams and sat on the governor's Task Force on Accountability -- raising troubling questions about information and information access just when the computer industry was raising paeans to the glories of technology.

After two years, Wresch's clear-headed and insightful look at the "Information Age'' is perhaps an even more important read.

Wresch is no neo-Luddite, but he does raise concerns regarding the idea that computers need to be placed in every classroom, office and home. Maybe, posits Wresch, all this technology just isn't enough. Maybe the answer isn't more technology. Maybe it's less technology or a different understanding of what technology can and should do for us.

"Despite all the satellites we put in the sky and the cellular-phone networks we build along our interstates, there is some information we cannot get,'' Wresch explains. And the gaps in what we know and who can access information are serious -- sometimes deadly -- omissions. In particular, Wresch focuses on the have-nots in the equation -- those too poor or disconnected from the information wave to benefit from the millions of Web pages on the Internet or e-mail. Sometimes, he reminds us, there are people who don't even have a telephone or connections to people who can help find a job, let alone the Internet.

Wresch's intellectual awakening to the realities of information access occurred while he took part in a Fulbright Exchange Program stationed in Namibia, in southern Africa, in 1993-94. He taught in the computer science program at the University of Namibia, and he began to investigate what type of computer and information infrastructure the country had. Not much, he soon found, and it was worse for the country's poorest citizens. "The worst aspect of their situation was that there was little chance it would ever change,'' he writes. "There was no hope.''

Wresch makes a persuasive case regarding the over-dramatization of technology's importance. And he directs our attention toward what ought to be central issues in any debate about technology and information.

Poverty is the problem, Wresch asserts, and it isn't getting any better.

The gap between the haves and have-nots is increasing, and with that increase, a gap in the information/knowledge people own also will continue to widen. People who hold knowledge and the information that is processed into knowledge possess the power to change their circumstances. Those who don't have that access are powerless.

"One of the cruder ironies of the information age is that rich people get their information practically for free, while poor people pay dearly for every morsel,'' Wresch writes. And in countries where the cost of a newspaper is equivalent to a day's pay, that price is very high indeed.

The knowledge-dispossessed are creating a world-wide breeding ground for exploitation.

In particular, Wresch argues that the one-way flood of information from the United States to the rest of the world is problematic. "Rather than an information explosion, the public media seem to be demonstrating an implosion in which few voices are heard and little of the world is seen.''

While Africa's plight is much more graphic and vivid, the plight of the working poor and uneducated in the U.S. is no less dire, nor is it much different. Geographic isolation (whether it's rural or abandoned inner city slums), lack of communication (phones and mail), lack of information (newspapers or the literacy to read them, etc.), lack of education (or access to education), inability to speak or understand the dominant language (immigrants, cultural/racial divides) and poverty all exist here in the United States. Who has time to think about information hunting and gathering when there isn't food or shelter? Never mind that information often serves as the only way people can raise themselves out of poverty.

Yet, it isn't always access that's the problem. Often it's the quality of information that impedes its users. Wresch is worried about the vast amount of "noise'' or false information that erodes those sources we trust most -- those with "authority.''

"Welcome to the `information' highway, where you can access the bizarre and inane at the speed of light,'' Wresch says. He quotes a frequent user of the "information highway'' who says, "At some point in time there will simply be too many people with too much information too poorly indexed to be of any use to anybody.''

Solving America's and the world's problems must start with an accurate understanding of the problems faced.

Wresch points to several examples of how deeply deflated numbers (in the case of the number of whales Russians were killing in the 1960s and '70s) and sharply inflated statistics (in the case of homelessness) can skew scientists' and legislators' understanding of how to solve the problems.

So, is technology good or bad? Neither, explains Wresch. It can be both and not exclusively one or the other. It all depends on how it's used by the people employing it. For example, U.S. "netizens'' are using the Internet to affect both political and marketplace processes, and in Namibia, rural residents use the radio as their main communication source, sending personal messages and delivering important information over the airwaves.

Of course, some of Wresch's examples are now outdated, including "tobacco companies talk to the world.'' But, perhaps that should give us some hope. Things are changing, just as Wresch predicts will happen.

Many of the things Wresch writes about are the types of statements that make the reader scratch their head and say, "Oh, of course. ...'' But with all the Web-related hype that abounds, and now the backlash against it, Wresch's statements make sense -- such as "at the end of every information pipeline is a person. That person may bring some dazzling abilities to the interpretation of the incoming information, but the person also brings a host of limitations.'' They are simple, and that might be why we've forgotten them. In our mad rush to accept and use new technologies, we've forgotten the golden rule of new technology: It can't solve fundamental problems. In fact, it can't "solve'' any problems at all. Only we can.

Heather Lee Schroeder is a librarian for The Capital Times.

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