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A familiar narrative following the dissolution of the USSR is that Cold War ended because Western capitalism triumphed over a backward, inefficient communist system. But what if the real story is about an empire buckling under the weight of its own military spending—a lesson with stark relevance for today? In the early 1990s, a wave of triumphalism swept the West. The Soviet Union had vanished, seemingly without the apocalyptic violence that accompanied the fall of other empires. The narrative was seductive: Reagan’s tough stance and the inherent superiority of free markets had consigned Marxism-Leninism to the “ash heap of history.”…
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A 2015 article on UK libraries described efforts by Parliament to amateurise public library services following widespread closures (Dickens, 2015). Given the desire of nearly every country in the world to create an “Information Society” such actions appear counterproductive. This sentiment is also stressed in Library and Information Studies (LIS) literature, especially if the author is writing about information literacy. It could be argued that these writings express a belief in Utopianism, i.e that the work and practices of Information Professionals can overhaul and improve both the individual and society as a whole. More specifically the dream of many Information professionals…
