Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2011), "Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct", Online Information Review, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 319-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521111128104

This is an ambitious work despite its brevity, laying out an agenda for investigating the evolution of information seeking from early hominids to the present day. Amanda Spink has solid credentials for this task, having contributed substantially to our understanding of information behaviour through her work on information seeking in search engines, among other areas.

Spink takes a broad view of the evolutionary perspective, starting by looking at paleohistory and the evolution of human cognitive abilities: the evolution of the human brain, paleoart as a form of information storage and retrieval, and how information behaviour contributed to the success of early humans in controlling their environment. She then moves on to develop a model of lifetime development of information behaviour based on studies of people's evolving information behaviour by Piaget, Erikson and Vygotsky. The concept of “information intelligence” is proposed to sit alongside other forms of intelligence: linguistic, logical, etc. She also looks at the development of information behaviour in historical times: development of writing, impact of printing, etc., and speculates on what lifetime histories of famous information users such as Casanova and Napoleon can tell us about the historical development of information‐seeking behaviour.

Any discussion of evolutionary instinct must address the nature versus nurture debate, and the extent to which behaviour is hard wired or culturally acquired. Spink argues that information‐seeking behaviour is less culturally dependent than the related human phenomenon of language, and that increasingly web technologies and global communications remove cultural differences in information‐seeking behaviour.

The major contribution of this work is the challenge to information studies researchers to work with related disciplines such as archaeology, history, psychology and evolutionary biology. Spink is frank in admitting that there are knowledge gaps to be filled, and that she is raising more questions than she answers. However, she has made a start on building a robust theoretical framework that meshes with related disciplines, rather than an isolated model based solely in information studies.

This research agenda has important implications. If we are to advise people on how to develop their information skills, we need to understand how information behaviour evolved. Design of future information interfaces will be improved if we understand how we have adapted to our current technologies.

As well as providing a significant research agenda, Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct introduces a perspective that will be important in introductory courses in information use and the place of information in society. While Spink does not speculate on the future of information behaviour, this reader found himself thinking about how new human computer interfaces might drive future human evolution: is there a homo worldwideweb in our future?