By Michael Wesch, Kansas State University

This video has music playing in the background and all the information is given by words on the screen.

A typewriter is shown, and the words "Characteristics of information:" are typed. Under that is this list:

• It is a thing.
• It has a logical place.
• Where it can be found.

SCENE: Camera goes through a library and shows a book with this title: On a Shelf. And the book's labels says, "In a file system." The camera moves to focus on a card catalog drawer, and the on-screen text says, "add a category." "Categories are managed." "It requires experts, and it is still hard to find."

Camera moves through the library to a file and shows the title on an envelope with microfiche in it: Issue of Newsweek - 125 No.9. The microfiche is put in a machine for viewing, and the magazine title is "TechnoMania" and the subtitle is "The Future Isn't What You Think." And the date of the magazine is February 27, 1995. The next headline shown reads, "The Internet? Bah!" The subtitle is "Hype Alert: Why Cyberspace Isn’t and Never Will Be, Nirvana."

A paper is shown with this text typed on it:

Characteristics of Information

• It is a thing.
• It has a logical place.
• Where it can be found.
  • on a shelf
  • in a file system
  • in a category
• Managing information
  • is managing categories
• It requires experts.
• and it is still hard to find

That same paper becomes a page with text-editing options, and the section called Characteristics of Information is renamed "assumptions about information on paper."

That page is highlighted and deleted.

New text is typed that says, "Digital information is different. It takes different forms. Digital information has no fixed forms, so we can rethink information beyond material constraints. So we must rethink information."

Google's search bar is shown, and the text inside the search bar is "the first website."

A new web page appears. The title is World Wide Web, with the question "What's out there?" as a link, which goes to a page where the text says, "There is no 'top' to the World Wide Web. You can look at it from many points of view. If you have to use a 'top' node, we recommend either this node or the subject list."

"Early websites built on familiar assumptions about information...as a thing with a logical place on a shelf, in a file system, in a category..." [shots of a Yahoo web page with categories and a list of links.] "Look what's happened here. Yahoo, faced with the possibility that they could organize things with no physical constraints, added the shelf back."

"Since then the web has been challenging our most basic assumptions...We learned that we might not need complex hierarchies to find information...9,120,000,000 indexed web pages times 551 words per page times 10 to the power of 12 equals over 5 trillion words, keywords. Almost 500 billion links. There is no shelf. The links alone are enough. Five trillion words...and we are just getting started..."

"Together we create more information than the experts...Wikipedia: 1740 million words in 7.5 million articles. The English Wikipedia alone has over 609 million words—roughly fifteen times as many as the next largest encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica—and more contributors (282,875)." [Shows someone editing the page and that number going up to 282,876.]

"And we organize the information ourselves by adding tags and using keywords, and we organize without material constraints...3 tags and now it is stored in all 3 places at once, without folders, without restricted categories, without closed categories, without limiting categories, without miscellaneous categories, everything is miscellaneous."

"Such features are not just cool tricks. They change the basic rules of order. We no longer just find information...it can find us. We can make it find us. Together, we can make it find us." [shots of YouTube's search features and Google search] "It's an information explosion. It's an information revolution. And the responsibility to harness, create, critique, organize, and understand is on us—on all of us. Are we ready?"