Making the Information Society: Experience, Consequences, and Possibilities

Chapter 8. Public Policy and Information

	I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says.
	--JUSTICE HUGO LA FAYETTE BLACK

In many important ways the American government has facilitated access to information that Americans have used for work and private purposes since the founding of the Republic, and never more so than during the 20th century. It has also influenced profoundly the amount of information and its flow through the economy during the whole course of the history of the United States. While state and federal legislators and administrators preferred a lesser role for government in the development and dissemination of information and its required infrastructures, they nonetheless realized ...