There was Information Science before Computers.

I got into computing because of my involvement with bibliographic information system and a quixotic attempt in the 70s to create NILES (National Inter-Library Information System) in India. 

Almost after four decades, I find it amazing, that majority of folks in computing do not recognize that information sciences is almost as old as human knowledge and in post-Gutenberg society finding and organizing what humanity knows has emerged as a field of pursuit.

Unless we go into the seminal basis of information science, informatics will remain confined to what the machines and automation can do. There is an urgent need to go beyond the technology of computers to revisit to the quintessential basis of information science.

The promise of Web 2.o and beyond can only be realized if we were to re-learn with a view to understand Dewey and Ranganathan. Viewed from that prism, work of people like Doug Engelbart, becomes meaningful. Unless that happens, the promise of a knowledge society will remain unfulfilled.