The Past, Present, and Future of Information Policy

INFORMATION.
COMMUNICATION ft SOCIETY

Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group

Submit your article to this journal S’

Article views: 7416

View related articles S’

Information, Communication & Society

ISSN: 1369-118X (Print) 1468-4462 (Online) Journal homepage:https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20
The Past, Present, and Future of Information Policy Towards a normative theory of the information society Alistair S. Duff
To cite this article: Alistair S. Duff (2004) The Past, Present, and Future of Information Policy, Information, Communication & Society, 7:1,69-87, DOI: 10.1080/1369118042000208906
To link to this article:https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118042000208906
Published online: 17 Feb 2007. I I I I I
Citing articles: 2 View citing articles S’
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rics20
Alistair S. Duff
THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF
INFORMATION POLICY
Towards a normative theory of the information society
The profile of information policy in academic and policy-making circles has been rising in recent decades, a function, presumably, of the expansion of an ‘informa­tion society’. Nevertheless, there is widespread confusion over its meaning and purpose. This paper seeks to produce a clearer picture, building on useful ground­work in information science and other disciplines. The history of information policy is traced, featuring exposition of the pioneering contribution of Marc Porat in the 1970s. The present state of information policy is then described, with particular reference to some salient themes of current literature: issue inventories (i.e. the scope of information policy); academic identity (including a critique of attempts to appropriate information policy for one discipline); and the ideal — or, it is argued, illusion — of a ‘national information policy’. In the final section of the paper, some suggestions are made for the future direction of information policy. First, information policy should engage much more thoroughly with the tradition of political philosophy. Second, information policy may benefit from more forays into the field cffutures studies. Finally, it is proposed that information policy could be positioned as a subset of the interdisciplinary specialism of information society studies, in which case its definition might be resolved in terms of the ‘normative theory of the information society’.