We are all replaceable. Life is full of surprises and anything can change at any moment; therefore, in any workplace, we should plan for our own absence, ensuring that our workplace will continue to be successful when we are gone.

Completion is preferable to perfection. I strive for excellence, not perfection. Sometimes working an extra 20 hours on a project makes only a negligible difference. I have learned to determine when to release a project/assignment.

Humans are important. In leadership, it’s easy to forget that customers, employees, and colleagues are human. They have lives, emotions, hardships, and struggles that affect their attitudes, behavior, and performance. Foremost, they should be treated with value as human beings.

Information Philosophy

I am legend(ary): The role of information professionals in a society inundated with information

In the past, information was heavily guarded, and society relied on the press to filter information, which is why the press has traditionally been known as the gatekeepers of information (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2020). However, technology has widened access to information such that anyone at any time searching for anything can find what they’re looking for.

This free flow of information is one hallmark of a society that has become a technopoly (Postman, 1993.) Postman claims that America is the world’s first technopoly, a society that deifies technology. Postman says a “technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down” (p. 71).

When journalists served as the gatekeepers, information seekers stood outside the gate, waiting for the release of information. Now by the time journalists decide what information to release through the gate, users have already scaled the wall. Users stand inside the gleaming city created by the information superhighway, defenseless against the assault of information

Information seekers have access to a plenitude of information, but what does it all mean? They’re confusedly staring at the map, desperately trying to ascertain how to arrive at their destination, but they can’t decode the symbols because this map has no legend.

As information professionals in such a technopoly, we have the opportunity to decode information for our users. We are the legend. We help information seekers decipher the entangled information web that surrounds them.

What shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?

-Neil Postman

Postman (2006) asserts that rapid technological development caused information to become decontextualized, that is, it became disentangled from “any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action” (p. 65).

Information professionals work to re-contextualize information for our users. We point users to information that will actually help them achieve a sort of wisdom that allows for useful problem solving and decision making. The guidance we offer has a profound influence on the way information is analyzed.

Postman believes that American society is “being deprived of authentic information … losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” (Postman, 2006, pp. 107-108).

Without a guide, how can users comprehend the encumbrance of information, pursue authentic information, and convert that information into knowledge? Inside the framework created by the technopoly in which we live, information professionals serve as the impetus–the encouragement–for their communities to not merely attain information, but to acquire knowledge.

And our work is legendary.

References
1. Oxana, V. (2018). Eyeglasses on map [Photograph]. Unsplash.
2. Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. Vintage Books.
3. Postman, N. (2006). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. Penguin Books.
4. Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Hanitzsch, T. (2020). The handbook of journalism studies. Routledge.