Information isn’t much good at all, actually. But information is necessary to form knowledge, which can make information worth a great deal. Information, by its very nature, is continually displaced by new information; knowledge endures.
There are two limits to the growth of knowledge:
- Time. The time we need for interpreting, analyzing, and integrating information.
- Capacity. Our capacity to think in an integrated manner.
The most important economic development of our lifetime has been the replacement of the second-wave industrial economy with an economy based on information, ideas, and knowledge. Instead of creating wealth with muscle and sinew, as previous generations did in the industrial economy, we now create wealth by manipulating symbols; by converting information into knowledge.
