Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age [Paperback]

William C. Wresch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

In the Information Age, information is power. Who produces all that information, how does it move around, who uses it, to what ends, and under what constraints? Who gets that power? And what happens to the people who have no access to it ?Disconnected begins with a striking vignette of two men: One is the thriving manager of a company selling personal computers and computer services.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

We all know knowledge is power. Access to information becomes more and more vital to individual survival in the information age. But while advancements in technology make an increasing amount of information available to millions, socioeconomic problems throughout the world are cutting huge groups of people off from the information they need to survive. William Wresch examines the scope of the problem in this eye-opening exploration of the dark side of the information revolution. His analysis probes the roots of the problems and the obstruction to information flow, as well as potential solutions and reasons for hope. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

As a Fulbright Fellow in Namibia, Wresch found 30 personal computer vendors in the capital city of Windhoek, and met businessmen who received floods of e-mail and CD-ROMS from Europe. Just blocks away, migrant laborers relied on word of mouth to get occasional work unloading trucks. Wresch, now a computing and mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin, takes us on a dizzying global tour of information glut and famine. Television sets per 1000 people? The Netherlands has 906; Bangladesh, five; the U.S., 815 (or 850, depending on which page you're reading). Phone lines per 100? Make that 51 in the U.S.; only one in China, India, Kenya and several other countries. And even where print, broadcast and electronic media abound, so do paradoxes and perils. Libraries across the world are accessible electronically, but books are still being burned; gigabytes of news bounce from satellite to satellite, but journalists are harassed, censored and killed. In case anyone in the information-rich world is getting complacent, Wresch warns of a surfeit of junk, numerous gaps in real information (black holes in cyberspace), and ever-increasing opportunities for invasion of privacy and the spread of hate. Wresch gushes facts like a fire hydrant, but his humane values and high-energy writing make him an excellent guide for this eye-opening trip.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813523702
• ISBN-13: 978-0813523705
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,154,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shows that information access and usability is many-layered, May 20, 1998

By 

Andrew D. Oram (Arlington, Mass., USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age (Paperback)

Lots of messages from the media, businesses, and government push access to new media and information technology. This book, written by a computer scientist, doesn't dismiss the importance of technology by any means -- but Wresch shows that there's a lot more to information and participation than having a radio or a modem. The difference between the affluent and the poor lies in the kinds of information offered (for instance, you can easily get stock quotes -- but not pointers to social services for welfare recipients), access to traditional sources like universities, and even "who you know." Wresch sees the problem of information poverty on many levels; this means that some of the topics are only loosely related (for instance, why American TV shows and movies beat out local programming around the world) but there's a new insight in every chapter.