GIGO

Netting into the Future

Ever been in a major pile-up on the information superhighway? It is an ironic inevitability that, in a system which has soooo much potential for the dissemination of information, you can nevertheless get bogged down just trying to find your way around.

I have a regular argument with a respected academic friend of mine who maintains that the Net will only serve to hugely expand the amount of junk noise at the expense of "real" information, that it will kill itself through sheer overload.

My optimistic view is that it will encourage us to be more discerning, and possibly more critical, about the information presented to us whether by "government sources" or the electronic village idiot. In a community which is driven primarily by content, I believe we will become more skilled at analysing and using that content and less likely to be overawed by the trinkets of presentation. I think it will also encourage greater cross-disciplinary work as people gain access to all manner of databases and information.

I think that the Net is likely to encourage some major social changes, in the same way as did the printing press in 16th century Europe and the photocopier in the Soviet Union, particularly as access becomes more readily available. It is already encouraging us to find new ways of dealing with information. Even basic electronic search routines require us to think about what we are trying to find out, how it relates to other areas. Try building a Web site and you are presented with all sorts of challenges regarding how to structure that information in some sensible, readily accessible format.

It's something we've been wrestling with ourselves as part of a major software project to develop an automated way of providing magazines in electronic as well as print form. Our new Web site for NZSM OnLine (http://nzsm.spis.co.nz) now gives subscribers access to all the articles in all the issues of the NZSM since our first test issue in August 1990. Clever, fast search routines make it easy to find any topic, but it's up to you how you use that information.

Give it a try -- take a look at the future.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.