Before we can discuss privacy and other information rights and their impact on us individually and collectively, we need a foundation of some of the leading theories about information and a shared vocabulary. The remainder of this chapter is an attempt to provide such a foundation. If you’re already familiar with contemporary information theory, feel free to skip ahead to the next chapter.
Information expands with usage. Stewart Brand, Global Business Network principal and former editor of the Whole Earth Review, is fond of saying “information wants to be free; information wants to be expensive.” But what does that enigmatic paradox really mean?
If I give you a copy of the manuscript for this book on a disk, or publish the contents of this book on the Web, I still have my original, yet your copy is indistinguishable from my original. This type of information, because it has value over time, expands as it is used. Each time you share this book—or more importantly, information about this book—with a friend, the value of the book grows in a measurable way. On the other hand, some types of information—usually time-critical information like stock prices, weather forecasts, or a horse-racing tip—have little long-term value and therefore contract measurably with each use.
Information is compressible. In fact, information is the most useful when it is compressed or concentrated. Imagine getting my research notes and a series of uncompressed rough drafts instead of this integrated book. Compressed—or fully integrated—information is not resource intensive. Integrated information is efficient. The creation and manipulation of information is downright stingy in the use of energy and other physical resources, relative to manufacturing technologies and processes. Someday, probably very soon, you’ll read books like this on small, light, book-like electronic devices with electronic ink, and the information will be even more highly refined, compressed, and integrated.
Information, by nature, is synergistic. The more we have the more we use (but we don’t use it up). The more we use, the more uses for the information we discover. Its reminiscent of those newer elements on the chemistry chart that chemists managed to find after society had created a need for them.
Information is not scarce. Facts are so abundant we are bombarded with what appears to be crucially important information. That bombardment then becomes one of the critical factors in planning for uncertainty. The more we earn our livings from manipulating information, the more we will find it necessary to reduce information overloads. Information has become so plentiful that lots of very smart people have created very lucrative careers helping us manage it.
Information is transportable. Information is more transportable than just about anything else we can imagine. And it moves from here to there quicker than a blink of an eye. How much does a telephone number weigh? How long does it take to transmit? This intangible quality of information allows a virtual community, for instance, to exist in cyberspace free of geographic constraints.
As virtual communities become more and more common within business communities, where people locate geographically will become less of an issue. We will all decide where we want to live based on a set of personal criteria that matters to us and us alone. No longer will we be forced to relocate at the whim of the workplace. My wife and I immensely enjoy working from our home in Saint Paul, but we often find a need to work virtually with friends and colleagues in Baltimore, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Austin, Atlanta, Moscow, and a variety of other places.
Information wants to leak. As every schoolboy and political operative knows, it’s exceptionally difficult to contain information. Like mercury, information tends to be highly malleable in some ways, yet very resistant to shape or constrain in other ways, always morphing to fit its container. The tendency of information to leak makes it extremely difficult to monopolize. Information’s uncontrollable nature can make it tricky and, again like mercury, at times even dangerous to work with.
Information wants to be shared. In purely economic terms, information cannot be constrained by exchange transactions. Like water, information wants a dynamically fluid, sharing transaction, and seeks its own level. If I sell you my computer, you have it and I don’t. But if I sell you the information contained within my computer, we both have it. As information is shared it gains velocity, picking up speed as it ricochets from receptive node to receptive node.
