Paraphrasing and referencing

Paraphrasing and referencing
Summarise the main points of this extract and provide the correct reference (Full report available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/downloads/GG%20Work%20Package%20V.pdf)

Information and communication technologies have evolved at an unprecedented pace in the past two decades changing the way people live their lives. While traditional sources of information, such as word of mouth, and early mediated forms of communication such as print, radio, television and telephone retain some importance, they are rapidly being superseded by networked electronic and computerized communications systems, most notably the internet.

Since the mid-1990s, as computerized communications networks have spread beyond specialist user communities such as the academy and military, their applications have also become increasingly diversified.

Technology mergers have created a communications environment in which distinctive media such as print, broadcasting, and telecommunications now operate businesses in direct competition with each other in the same markets. They have also created a world in which information is the primary currency.

With the expansion of the amount of information that is available to people and the growing ease with which it can be accessed, have changes occurred in the way individuals confront and use information? In particular, is there any evidence that the younger generation of today that is accustomed to the ubiquitous availability of a range of communications technologies search for and use information in qualitatively distinctive ways from their elders? If this is the case, to what extent might this generational distinctiveness in orientation towards information have important implications for the future of learning and, more especially, for the role that libraries – those traditional information repositories - might play in educational contexts?

The analysis presented in this report examines developments in information and communication technologies over time before concentrating on the plethora of changes that have occurred in relatively recent times. One crucial development in this context was the dramatic emergence of the internet as a public information tool from the mid-1990s onwards.