The Internet is a complex environment that affords many practices while constraining others The challenge is to develop languages & tools to critically engage with these environments & to navigate the topology of being a citizen in a technologically mediated environment This book begins this undertaking A New Theory of Information & the Internet first documents the historical emergence of the scientific mathematical computing & human communication discussions on information together with the rise of information as a resource & a commodity It posits that the contemporary situation has not changed in terms of resolving exactly what information might be as a real thing What has changed is the idea of information as a resource & a commodity which has become a cultural trope
- a standard way of looking at information In the process of examining the understanding of information & communication this book investigates the notion of an informed citizenry & the possibilities of a public spheres online within the context of the increasingly ubiquitous place of the Internet in social informational life