Foreword: Making Sence of Information for Environmental Protection

Abstract

We live in the Information Age. We can peer into our neighbors' backyards through satellite imaging, catch the latest Australian cricket scores on our smart phones, track our loved ones' airline flights online, and correspond with people virtually anywhere on earth via e-mail. In the era of globalization, we have greater access to stock quotes, scientific reports, medical advice, celebrity gossip, and breaking events than ever before, and we can get this information by the terabyte. The importance placed on information, of course, is nothing new: access to information has long been the lifeblood of any highly complicated endeavor, whether commanding a battalion in wartime or constructing an aqueduct, and dissemination of information has been critical to organized society as long as humans have lived in groups. Today, however, information flows through our lives with a velocity.and a pervasiveness never before experienced.