The Commodification of Information

Abstract

The commodification of information is not unique to New Zealand. We may have added some home-grown aberrations in the public sector due to the ideological purity of, and the power wielded by, our Treasury, some domestic absurdities in central and local government as lesser minds have attempted to translate the dogmas of commercialisation into policies for real institutions such as libraries and archives, but the movement towards the commodification of information is an international phenomenon which has gathered pace in the past forty years or so. However, one could claim with some justice that the transformation in New Zealand has been faster and more complete. We began late but within ten years a revolution has been accomplished. The assumptions about the public interest have been overthrown and public sector institutions reformed to build the new assumptions into everyday activity.

The literature on the information society and the commodification of information is vast, diffuse and in-conclusive. Even information itself is defined differently by economists, engineers, librarians and sociologists.