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Brian Martin: Information Liberation
Reviewer: Meredith Curtis
"Knowledge isn't power all by itself, but it can be a means for obtaining power, wealth and status." This is Brian Martin's contention, but he has other ideas in mind for what knowledge can do--promote community-oriented information systems that consciously undermine hierarchy. Control over the information that forms the basis of knowledge is often caught up in hierarchal structures that manipulate and limit information to maintain and reinforce their power. Martin contends that since power is inherently corrupting, society's limited outlets for information--whether academia or increasingly consolidated media empires - serve to place the power over knowledge in the hands of a necessarily self-interested few.
But it need not be this way. People can work to take control over the information that shapes their reality. Martin is careful to point out that it is the hierarchal systems themselves, not "bad" people, that are the root of the problem. He stresses this point because so many of those who have begun working in the media or entered academia with intention of reforming the system from the inside have been corrupted or exiled. Although created by people, hierarchal power structures themselves are anonymous and oppressive to the will of people. They are much like what Martin terms "biased technology." He says, "Some technologies, such as cluster bombs, are biased towards bad uses; others, such as straw hats and solar hot water collectors, are biased towards benign uses." Martin's program is to aid the creation of information systems that are biased towards benign or beneficial uses and based on community control and cooperation.
His book is like...