Paul Duguid

The Social Life of Information is a 2000 book by John Seely Brown (the former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of Xerox PARC) and Paul Duguid (Adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information), which discusses recently developed practices in the transmission of information in social and business contexts.

Information: A Very Short Introduction explores the concept of information, central to modern science and society, from thermodynamics and DNA to our use of the mobile phone and the Internet. It moves from a brief look at the mathematical roots of information — its definition and measurement in ‘bits’ — to its role in genetics, and its social meaning and value, before considering the ethics of information, including issues of ownership, privacy, and accessibility; copyright and open source. This VSI also considers concepts such as ‘Infoglut’ (too much information to process) and the emergence of an information society.