By Martin Bayliss
The information
revolution of the past 15- 20 years has dramatically changed
the way of living and doing business for billions of people around
the world. Communication is now virtually instantaneous for those
with access to the internet - an estimated 1.5 billion people
worldwide - and it is largely free. Online business is booming,
direct to consumers and business to business.
Skype and similar
services make international phone calls commonplace. The worldwide
web makes it possible to access newspapers around the globe with
a few clicks of a mouse. Perhaps equally important, there are
literally millions of blogs and other information sources outside
the mainstream.
Think of a subject,
type in a few words and click, and the world is on your screen.
Google offered 1.4 million options when I typed in "toilet
tissue" and 1.6 million for "kitchen towel", though
fewer than 500 for "lotionized tissues". Enough to
keep one busy for quite a while.
But that is nothing compared to more popular subject matter.
Nuclear energy elicits 22 million responses, George Bush 40
million and the Beatles more than 80 million. Football gives
454 million responses, the environment 553 million, enough
- at 1 minute per entry - for research lasting over 1000 years.
Unfortunately, quantity and quality do not always go hand in
hand. Google and the rest can't tell you which site offers the
gem of information you might be seeking. Even with Boolean logic
and the most sophisticated search engines, relevant and sensible
information can be hard to pinpoint.
You are as likely to stumble upon the ravings of a madman as
the wisdom of a Confucius. Sometimes it seems as easy to find
grains of gold in the Sahara as snippets of interest on the web.
And even when you have found something of interest, how to know
if is reliable?
For scientific, technical or commercial purposes, the internet
is a giant leap forward that, despite its shortcomings, offers
a wealth of information unavailable to most of us even 10-15
years ago. University research, worldwide patents, companies
and their products - and far more - are all available to the
discerning researcher.
Some things do not change. Much of the information on the web,
like most of what one reads in the mainstream press, is little
more than propaganda. One needs to read it all with a healthy
dose of scepticism.
Harold Evans, an English newspaper editor of the 1970s, said
he always asked himself, when talking to a politician: "Why
is that **** lying to me?" It is a sensible question to
ask oneself when reading any newspaper or online article today.
Most of us know the old adage: lies, damned lies and statistics.
In other words, numbers are just as untrustworthy as lies. The
reality is that what you can most trust is actually the statistics.
Of course it is easy to lie with them - or at least to mislead
the unwary - but when the paper reports that China won 51 gold
medals at the Beijing Olympics, you can be pretty sure it's true.
Likewise, when Tissue World says that Mill X has a new 2.7 m
machine, it's probably true.
I would offer an alternative: lies, damned lies and news. There
is almost always a hidden motive behind what appears in the media,
whether it comes from politics, business or the 'experts'. Of
course, the football scores are always right, but that's because
they are important.
And why am I writing all this? Because at Tissue World, though
we aim to be objective, accurate and global, we are ultimately
dependent on the same system that supplies the news to all the
media. And to a large extent, it is a self-seeking system, one
that subtly - and sometimes not-so-subtly - twists information
to give a particular slant.
In fact, I believe most of the information supplied to Tissue
World is accurate and honest. The problem we face is that it
is rarely complete or verifiable. Typically, a supplier develops
a new product, installs it in a production plant, and reports
on the benefits. What he rarely does, because of many producers'
obsession with confidentiality, is supply the names or details
of specific installations that would give a more rounded picture
of the products or processes described. The result is, unfortunately,
that at Tissue World we are unable to inform you, our readers,
as fully as we would like.
The loser is of course the industry itself. Nothing advances
knowledge and understanding like open exchange of information.
Nothing supports stagnation like censorship and secrecy. Of course
there is a limit to what companies can be expected to divulge,
even with the protection of patent law, copyright and so on.
But the tissue industry is far from approaching that limit. Indeed,
at many levels it seems to be retreating ever further into its
shell. A sad regression at a time of global expansion in freedom
of information. TW
The
information boom we are missing
