Section 1: Overviews and Fundamentals of Information Policy
In 1980, I went from the National Science Foundation to the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to work on OTA's first look at the policy implications of computer technology. At the time, some in OTA senior management told me that computer issues were transitory and easy enough to solve that one study would be sufficient. Fat chance! Ten years later, I left OTA after overseeing a program that conducted nearly forty policy studies involving telecommunications and computing. And, we had only scratched the surface of this complex and enduring set of issues.
While working on this first study, I started thinking about the broader structure of information policy. What themes tied all these seemingly disparate issues together? Why and how did computer and communications technology create new dilemmas and open up old debates? The answer involved thinking about stresses on intermediaries--people and institutions--and the way our political system reacts to stress.
These papers represent some of my attempts over the years to lay out a theory of technological change, organizational change, and politics.
I wrote Computer-based National Information Systems in 1981. It was my first report for the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). Chapter 5 is a first attempt to develop a conceptual framework with which to analyze information policy issues. My basic model of policy assessment then and now is to view policy as an attempt to resolve tensions among conflicting values we simultaneously hold in our heads about information.
Technological Change and the Evolution of Information Policy: This is an Outlook Paper written in 1997 for the American Library Association when I was a serving as a half-time Senior Policy Fellow. It is the most recent information policy overview I have written, albeit in the specific context of libraries.