Based on both analysis and experiences related to us by urban leaders, four types of knowledge and information are required to function and to be successful as a decision-maker in a typical city:
- Personal knowledge, e.g., home neighbourhood, likes and dislikes,
competitors for power, etc.
- Knowledge of the immediate situation in a city, e.g., priorities
of residents, most influential people, what is breaking down
- Ideology, e.g., what values should be achieved, who should be helped
most, who or what is causing problems
- Scientific and technical knowledge, e.g., how fast the population is growing, how to engineer a bridge to carry loads and stresses put on it, what the legal and commercial viability requirements of specific financing tools are, etc.
Knowledge and information taken from the Internet can help with each of these types. However, it cannot address important aspects of decision-making at all, such as charisma and personal following. Here is what the Internet can reasonably provide:
|
Type of Knowledge
|
Internet Offers
|
Limitations
|
| Personal | Electronic mail contact with colleagues in other cities; news and intelligence on what colleagues and competitors are doing. | Electronic contact is more impersonal; suppliers of news may be biased or providingincorrect information; most important intelligence may not be committed to writing. |
| Situational | Media stories; indicators of positive and negative trends; public opinion polling results. | Quality of Internet information is variable and may not cover local scene; much current content reflects vantage point of U.S.-based sources. |
| Ideological | Political publications and news; analysis of partisan positions; intelligence about political positioning; philosophical publications and commentary. | Ideology is often deeply rooted in personal experiences and social situations and usually changes only slowly or through significant crises. |
| Scientific and technical | Wide access to scientific findings, statistics, innovative products and services. Improvements in global knowledge flows arising from Internet concentrated here. | Much Internet information amounts to "commercials" to buy print publications; very large amounts of data are available in the public domain via the Internet. |
The purpose of giving you this matrix is to help you use the Internet more effectively, and to help establish appropriate expectations about what it can and cannot do. Certain promoters of this new medium give the impression that it is a "magic bullet" that can solve many problems quickly and easily.
In fact, like most human inventions, the Internet both solves and creates
problems. Among the problems created is "information overload". This can
help cause decision-makers to rely on purely personal and ideological
choices, just to cope with their situation of feeling overwhelmed.
