The “information society” is real. Information—as a marketable commodity—is quickly taking up the powerful role once held by heavy industry and manufactured products. How this revolution is affecting society, and how society and government are responding to it, is the subject of this book. Its lessons and conclusions are of critical importance as we enter the last decade of this century.
    Every dimension of social life, whether in the home or the workplace, is affected by information and the technologies that give it market value. Along with the positive aspects of these broad changes, there are inevitable problems: the growing gap between the “information rich” and “information poor,” the need for widespread access to communication and information technology, the threat to individual privacy, and the potential of the technology to create global instabilities. The editors have enlisted specialists and scholars in business, communications studies, computing and information science, economics, law, library science, political science, and sociology to examine these changes and problems by looking at information specifically as a commodity to be traded, protected, and desired.