Description

(c) 2015 Paul Wheelhouse
11″ X 17″ Broadside printed on glossy cardstock

Drafted by Paul Wheelhouse October 2015 while taking the Library in Information and Society course at UIUC for the MSLIS program. The professor made it into a class activity for each of the five groups to encapsulate the “law” into a short phrase. The whole class is there credited with contributing to the overall Five Laws. The drafter made some final edits before publishing.

1. Information is Necessary for Life (The Word is Life).
All people, every individual, needs information for life, from information necessary for locating and obtaining such necessities as food, clothing, markets, housing, health, medical care and and obtaining information on schools, laws, public safety, law enforcement, government agencies, public welfare, political representatives, banking, religious/ spiritual gathering places, etc. and using public libraries and information centers.

2. Everyone should have equal access to information regardless of format.
Every individual should have equal access all the information they need for life in the form they want whether printed on paper or in digital form. Information in digital form does NOT have intrisically greater value just because it is in digital form.
Any strategy or agenda by any technologists to purposefully design technologies for public use that advantage young persons but make it difficult for seniors, the elderly, the visually impaired and other handicaps is unacceptalble, immoral, unethical, and illegal based on federal fair laws.

3. Everyone should have free and unrestrained access to information.
All people have the freedom and right to basic and necessary information (non-proprietary) for life and unrestrained.
There are several kinds of information that should be freel and available to all citizens regardless of socio-economic class (wealthy, middle class, poor) provided by government agencies, public libraries, and various nonprofit organizations, such as laws, filing taxes, locating schools and other community information, public saftey, family planning, health, political representatives, etc. Not all information is free, such as getting a higher education.

4. The user decides the information value
Each User decides for him or herself the value of the information they seek and obtain.

5. Google is NOT God.
Google is NOT God, no matter how big Google’s data centers become or how big the corporation is nor how amazingly fast search results appear and the ‘wizardry’ of the sheer number of results nor how sophisticated their algorithms become. Google can NEVER be compared to God.