Info/Law

It’s a completely obvious point about the wired world, but nonetheless every once in a while I still sit back and shake my head in amazement at how much communications technology has transformed our expectations about our access to information. This week’s rise of a new Prime Minister of Great Britain reminded me of just how fast this evolution has moved.

I have been a keen follower of British politics ever since I spent my junior year studying there — which happened to be the fascinating year Margaret Thatcher was toppled from power by her own party. When I first returned to the US and wrote my senior thesis on contemporary British politics, it was not easy to fulfill my unusual level of interest in a subject rather peripheral to most Americans’ concerns — occasional New York Times stories did not really satisfy. With each subsequent UK election, however, my access to information improved. I still recall borrowing somebody’s shortwave radio and listening to BBC World Service coverage of the 1992 election in a dorm room (while writing that thesis).  By 1997, when Tony Blair first swept his “New Labour” party to power, someone (I believe C-SPAN) carried the BBC’s television coverage, and I stayed up late into the night watching the “morning after” as Blair prepared to go see the Queen. (Yes, I know I am a geek. I also blog on a site called “Info/Law,” don’t I?) For the 2001 election, I was able to add online access to London newspapers. And for the 2005 election I moved over to the internet completely, where the BBC’s data-rich web site offered cool maps, lots of statistics, and constant rolling coverage, all on demand so I didn’t even need to stay up quite as late (though I still did stay up).

Gordon Brown’s ascension came without an election, of course (not unlike the switch from Thatcher to John Major that first kindled my fascination with this subject). But I still wanted to see the big events of the day and learn all about Brown’s complete Cabinet reshuffle. The BBC, in addition to its multiple stories, sidebars, and FAQs, now provided an hour-by-hour blog of the day and plentiful video and podcasts — the latter a return to my earlier days of TV and radio, but packaged for constant access so that I could get it whenever I wanted. Along with the newspapers’ web sites. And constant updates of Wikipedia. In fact, the tipping point had finally come — in contrast to years past when I scraped for any tidbits of information I could get about British politics, now there was even more information available than I wanted to consume. I was sated.

Those snapshots every few years show how far things have come. And even if a little part of me misses the lunacy of hunting for obscure news about my unusual interests, there can be little doubt that our world is better off now.

Filed under: Digital Media, Internet & Society, Media, Voting, international