by Hugh M. Lewis

The Information Revolution has become centered upon the Internet, though not exclusively so. It involves also the rapid development of digital technologies for information storage & processing, and infrastructure employing a wide range of techniques and technology in communications. The Internet is larger than the worldwide web, and involves the development and distributed integration of many different kinds of computer based network systems, as well as e-mail systems and, to a lesser extent, news and other media transmission systems.

The primary consequence of this information revolution has been the empowerment, or at least the potential empowerment, of the individual user who is caught somewhere within a complex, circuitous global information loop. On the open Internet, all users are potentially free and equal. On the open Internet, all information published is potentially free and equally available. This sense of empowerment has taken many different forms, and has also led to unfortunate results in the abuse of power and the perpetration of various forms of exploitation and even violence. An unintended consequence of this process has been the pyschosocial de-repression of some forms of symbolically based behavior due to, and the resulting rise of a relatively high incidence of the formation of neurosis, personality and impulse-control disorders triggered by informational access on the Internet, as well as the formation of counter-cultural networks of people centered around these deviant forms of behavior. The dissemination of e-viruses are a fitting example of the abuse of this form of power--originating from a single source computer, and capable of infecting millions of distant computer files and crippling and permanently damaging entire networks.

Global empowerment in the emerging Information Economy also takes the form of the growth of what can be called a global common stock of world knowledge that, as it develops, becomes increasingly detailed, specific and comprehensive in form and function. This global common stock of world knowledge can be rendered comprehensive, and rapidly available at any point on the earth at any time of the day or night. The knowledge base itself grows in volume, detail, and sophistication with each passing minute. Language barriers certainly exist and persist and serve to partition the global Internet into large sub-realms, primarily on the basis of the world's major languages, and secondarily in terms of more local national, regional divisions. Even these boundaries are slowly eroding with the rise of improved automated translators that are capable of quickly rendering electronic text in one linguistic medium into some rough equivalent and meaningful form in some alternative linguistic medium.

As in all areas of human endeavor, those process and functions that cannot be easily or simply automated, remain the purview of rather intensive investment of human time and energy, and hence, of other capital resources.

Where is empowerment of the Internet taking us? The key words seem to me at this time to be the following:

• 1. distributed integration: networks and resource management systems are spreading out and becoming decentralized in form and function.
• 2. modularization & dynamic diversification: there is a occurring a tailoring and customization of goods and services, labor & knowledge to fit individual profiles of both producers/consumers.
• 3. automation: increasing kinds of processes are becoming the purview of automated systems not requiring direct human labor inputs except for initial & final control functions, management & maintenance.
• 4. informational globalization: a common knowledge-based foundation will be created for emergence of a global meta-cultural pattern transcending ethnocentric and nationalistic boundaries.
• 5. redomestication: there seems to be a return to the home, and a redefinition of the functions and spaces of the home, of work and play.
• 6. resymbolization: there will invariably occur maze-way reformulation and realignment of symbolic worldview to reflect emergent patterns of globalization and new requirements for communication and understanding across traditional or conventional social boundaries.
• 7. consumer/producer foreshortening & mirror integration: We are all consumers and producers, but generally the market place separates places of production from places of consumption, and hence separates as well our identity as producer and consumer. It also is the case that patterns of production vary substantially throughout the world, both within a world capitalist system and cross-culturally in what have become increasingly marginalized contexts. I predict a convergence of consumer and producer into a mirror identity of one another. On one hand relationships between consumer A in one part of the world and producer B in another part of the world will become more immediate and more direct, and each will become their own middleman in being able to deliver on demand their goods/services.

In summary, I would say that the information revolution and its empowerment is creating a totally new global marketplace, as evident by entities like E-bay or Amazon.com, mediated by shipping/transportation corporations like Federal Express or UPS. This marketplace is largely virtual, decentralized and domestically oriented toward the needs of an increasing array of individual consumers.

Each of these points will be dealt with more thoroughly in later publications. It will only be mentioned in closing this brief notice of the empowerment of the Internet that the larger structural consequences of the Information revolution will be a complete realignment of structural relations (social, economic, political & ideological) rendering a many traditional and conventional structures essentially obsolete or at least relativized or relatively localized by the larger meta-systemic context created by the Information revolution. Under the right conditions, many human-based control structures may be obviated through automation, and resource distribution and production programs can be realigned in new and more open and viable informational networks. We can speak of the teleological realization of the "more with less" synergistic revolution talked about by Buckminster Fuller in the late 1960's.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I