The expanding volume and escalating cost of printed information have recently made this process still more complicated and unproductive for all parties concerned. But there is only so much we can accomplish by devising still more brilliant strategies for managing scientific and scholarly information. In some areas of science and scholarship, we have clearly reached the fundamental limits of the print-based system. Network-based alternatives offer a means for scientists and scholars in those fields to surmount such limits. This is a very familiar line of reasoning among folks who are working on networked information resources and services.
Users are clearly the predators, and information is clearly the prey in printed environments.
There is no doubt that this sort of relationship does exist and will continue to exist in networked information environments. But there is also no doubt that networks already manifest a complete reversal of this relationship. Most contemporary Internet users, for instance, spend much more time dealing with information that has found them than they do looking for information that they need to find. These feelings are not unique to networked information environments, but I believe they are very much more prevalent in such environments. It is difficult to say for sure, but some of the elements of an answer seem clear enough.