THE NEW INFORMATION INDUSTRY

Linda Kyana Maisamari
MIM/EDUC/3611/2009-2010.
Online Information Industry (Libs883) Assignment

THE NEW INFORMATION INDUSTRY.
The world continues to experience high tech devices that have brought about the use of electronic systems and computers for storing, analyzing, retrieving and utilizing information, making resources like newspapers, local phone directories, pre scheduled broadcast of television and radio programs, books, movies, videotapes and soft wares inefficient in the information industry and media.
The new information industry is basically an international network of computers connecting other networks and computers from universities, industries, using internet access and search tools like directory search tool for subject search ,search engine tool which searches information using keywords and responds with a list of references , and meta-engine searches like meta crawler to perform searches on the web which comprises of stored information called database linked to other databases at other websites.
Mergers and Alliances combine two or more organizations to form a single one allowing their differences gradually disappearing so that it is impossible to separate them. The act of joining two or more companies, organizations, businesses into one is massive and continuing to grow rapidly.
The information industry today, is basically content creation and collection, display using various devices, storage in memory devices, processing using applications and distribution using various means of transportation. This worldwide information-centered business exceeds one trillion dollars annually.
Traditionally information industry is viewed in the aspects of computing which deals with information storage and processing; office technologies dealing with task automation and information creation and display; telecommunication dealing with sending signals, images and messages over long distances by radio, telephone, television, satellite etc. Information industries exists in voice which deals with telecommunication, text which deals with publishing, images which deals with photography, audio/video deals with entertainment, and data which deals with computing.
In those days, information was created, stored, manipulated, and transformed by its form. Textual information existed mostly in hard copy or metallic templates used by printers to make copies. Audio information existed as analog waveform captured on vinyl or magnetic tape. Still and moving images were rendered in chemical form, later on moved to analog form through the development of video technology. Only computer based information existed as precise digital data.
With digitization, all of the media become translatable using a system of receiving and sending information as a series of the numbers one and zeros, showing that an electronic signal is there or is not there. As more content is digitized, the computer virtualizes it and liberates it from the shackles of it previous medium. The paradigm shift that pushed the power of computer to the desktop, advances in smaller and electronic storage which have made laptop computers more powerful than mainframes were in the early 1980’s.The key developments in computing includes processing, data storage, miniaturization of component technologies, display and software which is easier to use and versatile.
The resulting shifts from centralized to distributed processing created a paradigm shift in the computer industry. When similar improvements are created in the price or performance ratio band with, parallel shifts in the communication industry are inevitable.

The growth in internet use created the demand for more bandwidth to the residential market place. For developed countries it will foster a higher degree of cross-cultural exchange as global communications and transactions become highly facile. Developing economies will benefit greatly from the affordability that comes with volumes; deploying this technology once the costs have come down will provide great economic development benefits. The new information industry will transform to digitized content, multimedia devices and convergent networks.



CRITICISM
Information industries are considered important for several distinctive reasons. Even among the experts who think information industries are important, disagreements may exist regarding which reason to accept and which to reject. First information industries are rapidly growing part of the economy, but not fast enough to cover the declines in print advertising. To thrive, information companies need to convince advertisers to pay much higher rates to user who value their time at tens or hundreds of dollars an hour lingering on information websites for perhaps half an hour everyday and they are not just channel flicking, “they’re engaged”. People may give up newspaper habit, but their appetite for information is growing.
The report does not account for the inherently unpredictable, like some new technology coming along and opening the entire industry. It is possible to say with great prediction what the industry will look like in 2015. Yet whatever the actual numbers it’s hard to think of a scenario which technology becomes substantially more attractive than they are now. The rise of notebooks and tablets proves that for many tasks, consumers are ok with sacrificing power in favor of portability. In the future most of the power in our computer will come from the internet. You probably won’t need to store or edit your music, movies, and other files locally for long. But in Nigeria we are not getting better wireless network drives and internet based storage systems where all media will reside in a central location ‘in house or some far-off server farm’ accessible to all. The annals of technology are littered with better things that we abandon in favor of more convenient things. We dropped vinyl in favor of CDs, and then dropped CDs in favor of MP3s, even though each technology offered lower audio fidelity than the previous one. In this way, the shift to portable machines fits lager social trends. More people want to work from home and more businesses are allowing them to do so. Laptops, notebooks, and tablets fit into that life style. DESKTOPS DON’T.
At the moment our computing life is scattered. There is little continuity as you shift from laptop to a tablet to a smart phone to a desktop; each device has different applications, access to different sets of data and a different screen configuration but this paper is basically related to developed countries without considering the challenges faced by developing countries like Nigeria.