On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
Interpretation
Information is both valuable and increasingly accessible, creating a tension between its cost and its availability.
This quote by Stewart Brand highlights the dual nature of information in the modern age. On one side, information is regarded as highly valuable, capable of transforming lives when properly utilized. Conversely, technological advancements reduce the cost of sharing information, leading to a push for free access. This creates a conflict where the inherent value of information competes with the growing trend toward its free dissemination.
In practice
During a lecture on the role of technology in society, this quote can illustrate the paradox of information sharing.
The urgent finds you; you have to find the important. Importance is not fast. It is slow. It is not superficial. It is deep. And as a result, it's extremely powerful. When important matters go wrong, they undermine everything. When they go right, they sustain everything.
Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly
A library doesn't need windows. A library is a window.
I wanted to create a toolkit which I would have wanted as an entrepreneur to use these principles of psychology in product design. Some startups totally forget the trigger. In some, the action is too complicated. Others don't have a variable reward, which maintains mystery.
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
If we don't take an approach that looks holistically at the form a video-game platform should take in the future, then we're not able to sustain Nintendo 10 years down the road.
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