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.
We want to build intelligence that augments human abilities and experiences.
Cryptocurrency currencies take the concept of money, and they take it native into computers, where everything is settled with computers and doesn't require external institutions or trusted third parties to validate things.
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.
If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!
Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.
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