ABSTRACT
There are deeply seated differences in the ways various people interpret the role of information in society and in individual life. For some, the acquisition of new information opens the door to opportunities and achievements. Others get discouraged by the barriers they encounter when searching for relevant facts or opinions they will trust. Moreover, the same person may react to an announcement, a graph or a journal article differently under different circumstances. In small neighborhoods and in multinational corporations, in legislative bodies and on farms, people are using some kind of information all along and we still know very little about their preferences and habits although volumes have been written about information as a commodity and about the process of informing and being informed.
