Chapter 17 Data Deprivation (Schiller)

This chapter is mostly about information rather than information technology. Many of Schiller's arguments reminds me of the critics of the information society in the first part of the reader. Large corporations dominates and controls the information flow, while giving people the impression of free speech or free expression. But whose freedom is it? This resembles the argument that "corporate planners ... tailored images and slogans that helped depict identities, attitudes, and lift-styles" (Winner, Chapter 4, p.49). This is largely a economic matter: only these large corporations can afford to deliver the messages using mass media (the next chapter raises a good counterargument against this).

However, Schiller goes beyond the "deregulation", "privatization" and "expansion of market relationship" in economy field, and talks about the actual information flow in scholoarly information communication and government documents and records. If in universities and governments, public/social records is now serving the financial or political purposes of certain people/institutions, then what is left free for the general public? Schiller cites data from ALA, which is great. :)

As summarized in the end, "deregulation of economic activity, privatization of functions once public, and commercialization of activities once social" are possible sources of the digital divide. But is this a necessary product of information society?