In 2006 the word "Infonaut" was nominated by
The Global Language
Monitor (GLM) as one of the top ten words of 2006.
GLM defines Infonaut as "those who blithely travel along the
'infobahn'."Infonaut's business mission is to increase
information competence in companies and organizations by
education and professional consulting. Infonaut is offering a
unique program for systemic diagnosis and development of
intelligence functions, development of future oriented teams and
demand guided intensive training for information workers.
In 1993 the word “Infonaut” came into
my mind, when I was working on a course about cyberspace and the
infosphere. I had more than 10 years of experience from searching
in on-line databases, and used Compuserv and American Online for
file-sharing and newgroups. In one of my search sessions I hade the
strong feeling of gliding through the infospace like an astronaut
in space and I recognized that in the future nearly everyone will
become an infonaut and a networker. This was the start of a new
career as an infonaut researcher and infonaut trainer. I registred
the trademark "Infonaut" (reg.nr
PRV
261 587) and later in 1994 I started my
own consulting firm, Infonaut Network Intelligence Consulting, that
was transfered to
Infonaut
AB in 1999. Today Infonaut's business mission is to increase
information competence in companies and organizations by education
and professional consulting. Infonaut is offering a unique program
for systemic diagnosis and development of intelligence functions,
development of future oriented teams and demand guided intensive
training for information workers.Today I define an
Infonaut as “a person a person with high
information
literacy and technical skills to navigate into and
access information in the infosphere
.” Coined by Luciano
Floridi on the basis of biosphere, the infosphere
denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all
informational entities (thus including informational agents as
well), their properties, interactions, processes and mutual
relations. It is an environment comparable to, but different from
cyberspace (which is only one of its sub-regions, as it were),
since it also includes off-line and analogue spaces of
information.
Word history and
present use:
It was
Howard
Rheingold who used the word "Infonaut" in 1985 in
this book "Tools for Thought: the
history and future of mind-expanding technology".
In Chapter One he describes "infonauts" as "the older brothers and
sisters of the adolescent hackers you read about in the papers.
Most of them are in their twenties and thirties. They work for
themselves or for some research institution or software house, and
represent the first members of the McLuhan generation to use the
technology invented by the von Neumann generation as tools to
extend their imagination. From the science of designing what they
call the "user interface"--where mind meets machine -- to the art
of building educational microworlds, the infonauts have been using
their new medium to create the mass- media version we will use
fifteen years from now". That great foresight of a man who really
lives the future.The Internet domain
“infonaut.com” was registered in Aug 1993 and was the
the first ISP (Internet Service Provider) in Utah (later sold
to FiberNet). The domain name was sold
toInfonautics
Inc.for US$1200.
(ref). On August 29, 2001 Infonautics shareholders
voted approval of a reverse merger with Tucows, a Toronto-based
provider of wholesale digital products to Internet service
providers and Web-hosting companies, giving Tucows control of 80%
of the company.
In Europe there is
Infonautics
GmbHSwitzerland, founded in 1995, working
in the fields of software development, internet technology and
multimedia.
In Greece the company
Infonautics S.A. in Athens was founded 2004, highly specialized on
delivering Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing turn-key
solutions.
