ABSTRACT
In capitalist democracies, we value information because of its cognitive and emotional values. It lets individuals make decisions and make better decisions about public and private institutions, allowing them to exert personal, economic or political control over them – whether it is at the checkout line or the ballot box. It is also lets individuals feel more certain about what those institutions are and are not doing. By examining contemporaneous sources from the postwar period, this chapter explores how these instrumental valuations of information and their interplay with seven key developments in politics, the economy, technology and education can explain why there were demands for information in Canada and the United States during those years. The rejection of these demands resulted in leaks, as well as calls for transparency measures – most of which were directed at governments, since they were seen as the preeminent postwar sources of information about both the public and private sector. Freedom of Information laws are perhaps the ultimate example of those measures but they were not the only ones introduced during this period. However, transparency and information have not resulted in the kind of citizens and consumer control we thought they would – something that has become ever more apparent in the post-truth era. The chapter suggests this could explain the rise of authoritarianism, as individuals seek other means of control in an increasingly uncontrollable and uncertain world.
