ABSTRACT
We live in an age of information (Wade, 2006). The production, storage, and sharing of information (much of it digital) is a significant facet of economic, cultural, and scientific affairs at scales from local to global. Societal commentators and analysts suggest that we are experiencing a digital revolution, an information explosion, and we are, as individuals, highly susceptible to information anxiety or overload (Biggs, 1989; Holtham and Courtney, 1999). This is a fact that anyone who must contend with their daily e-mail, phone calls, and information requests will have no trouble relating to (Weber, 2005). ‘One of the great ironies of the information age is that as the technology of delivering information becomes more sophisticated, the possibility that we can process it all becomes more remote’ (Wurman, 1989: 294). The amount of information being produced globally is both astounding and increasing. Lyman and Varian (2003) estimated that 5 exabytes (5,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or 5 1018 bytes if stored in digital form) of new information was created and stored in 2002 and this value increased by 30 per cent per year between 1999 and 2002. Five exabytes of information equates to approximately 800 megabytes of information for every one of the 6.3 billion people on the planet in 2002; an amount of information that would require ten metres of bookshelf space per person if the information was stored on paper.
