Information to users

The Puzzle of Information and Politics
Before beginning, it is important to discuss why the
foundational questions are worth asking. What makes their answers interesting, provocative and ultimately useful? The
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exponential diffusion of information through new
technologies in the 'information age" has exposed political tensions among actors in the US government and across issues in international communications.
Both the public and private sectors in the United
States find themselves faced with a perplexing paradox.
While promoting the ideals of free, open, transborder flows of information, there is still a desire to control
information, an action considered antithetical to free
markets or democratic principles. For example, in February 1998 Microsoft CEO Bill Gates testified before the US
Congress to refute accusations that his company had achieved a monopoly in the computer operating system industry.
According to US law governing such situations, Microsoft must be constrained. Meanwhile, the same legislators fought China's entry into the World Trade Organization because of its refusal to open its borders - a decidedly anticapitalist stance - to products such as those made by Microsoft.6 As the United States attempts to limit Microsoft's activities at home, it encourages its expansion abroad.
This paradox, as well as the strategies which US
policymakers use to confront it, are rooted in a worldwide,
6 See James V. Grimaldi. 'Microsoft Trial - The Gates
Deposition: 684 Pages of Conflict" The Seattle Times, 16 March 1999, p. A1 and David Lawsky, 'Witness Says Microsoft Has 'Natural Monopoly"' The Toronto Star, 17 June 1999, Business Section.