It is no great mystery that major shifts in cultural and societal processes are marked with new advances in technology. This is also true of information technology. The printing press, the camera, the telephone, the computer, the Internet and the cell phone, are all inextricably linked to major changes in human culture. The printing press is linked to the rise of social movements. The photograph and telephone are linked to the birth of the Industrial Revolution. The advent of early computers and television coincides with the first steps towards global consortiums like the League of Nations. Information media changes how we perceive the world around us. The following profiles are two examples of current media that are expected to make a difference in how information is generated and perceived.

The Hundred-Dollar Laptop

At the 2005, U.N. World Summit on Information Society, The MIT Media Lab’s Professor Nicholas Negroponte and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan together presented the world’s first hand powered “$100.00” laptop. The project, also known by the name of Negroponte’s independent NGO, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), sees a future where all children have a computer of their own. The OLPC project is especially geared towards remote areas where access to resources and financial support might be limited. Already the governments of Thailand and Brazil are making plans for orders. This laptop is in everyway portable. It is powered with a 500-Mhz AMD processor and a gigabyte of memory for storage. A low-powered LCD screen is just 7 inches designed by MIT Media Lab’s Mary Lou Jepsen. The low cost of this unique LCD screen (only $35.00 per unit) accounts for the greater part of the laptop’s affordability. In terms of connectivity in remote areas, the laptop has built-in Wi-Fi with its own mesh network that works peer-to-peer. In addition, the unit has a microphone and headset to act as a telephone communications system. The electricity-generating crank creates 40 minutes of power per 1 minute of hand turning.

Preserving Information

The catch-22 about developing information technologies is their impact on document preservation. Information media represents a wide spectrum of materials. From animal and plant based papers to virtual instant messages, archival preservation of documents is a never-ending issue. Virtual documents are particularly problematic because there is no original hardcopy. Still, virtual documents currently make a large up a large portion of business transactions. In October 2005, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) shelled out $308 million for the development of an Electronic Records Archives system (ERA). The project is lead by Lockheed Martin (the same Lockheed Martin working with Homeland Security and US Department of Defense Intelligence) in conjunction with subcontractor FileTek Inc, a data management software company. FileTek is also responsible for providing services to the National Archives of the United Kingdom. This six-year project seeks to create a comprehensive and accessible record of “digital history” that is properly preserved, protected and stored regardless of document format. One of the products, StoreHouse (created by FileTek) is a data storage and access management system designed to handle large quantities of structured and unstructured data. At the same time, StoreHouse can accept new storage devices and media types and supports automatic backup. “If Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on a laptop, we may not have it today. Electronic Records have been disappearing at an alarming rate because we’ve had no means to preserve them.” -- Washington Secretary of State, Sam Reed. Documents represent cultural and societal processes that can have governmental and legal value. From presidential records to cultural artifacts, archival preservation is a means of retaining historical evidence. In November 2005 information search engine giant, Google, donated $3 million to the Library of Congress (US), to begin the process of building a “World Digital Library.” The plan will include creating bilingual projects, forming ties with international libraries, and a developing record of world cultures. Right now, the Library of Congress is in discussion with the National Library of Egypt to feature a scientific collection of Islamic works dating from the 10th through the 16th century.

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