Quotes About Information

So what? Somebody's always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions." Martha

By analyzing public data with the help of computers, people can uncover secrets without ever seeing a classified database.

Weaned on educational games and multimedia encyclopedias, kids naturally seek out the trivial when forced to read books. While visiting a school librarian, I listened to a high school senior seek help with an assignment: "I'm writing a report about Napoleon," he said. "Can you find me a thin book with lots of pictures?

Richard Stallman, a free-lance computer programmer, loudly proclaimed that information should be free.

Martha said] "So what? Somebody's always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions.

Breaking news is when you disseminate broken issues and fragmented ideas into one.

I use computers for email, staying current with my own website as well as finding important information through other websites. I also use it for creating MP3 files of new music I'm working on.

The growth of these markets therefore seemed to reduce the need for information, other than the self-referential information being produced by the markets about themselves. This came to represent a higher reality than the 'real' economy.

He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway.

Does the salesman like this information? Yes, because you've exposed your deadline to him without knowing his.

Though our vocabularies were different, we both view the human mind as a symbol-manipulating (my term) or information processing (Al Newell) system.

We invented a whole new class of computer programming languages known as list processing languages. The basic idea is that whenever a piece of information is stored in memory, additional information should be stored with it telling where to find the next associated piece of information.

A library is thought in cold storage.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Science is organised knowledge.

Americans need accurate information in order to consider Social Security reform. Too bad the media can't be counted upon to provide it

an abundance of facts is not necessarily an abundance of knowledge.

This was the usual thing. What I asked for was facts: what I got was a sermon.

The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.

Jasper," said Call. "Tell me something, and please answer honestly." Jasper nodded. "Is this the Assembly's new strategy for torturing me until I give them information?

He made me a story, and now I am going to make a story out of someone else. 'So I am to sit here and feed you information,' Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. 'And you're to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.' I fix him a look. 'I can be charming. I charmed you, didn't I?' He rolls his eyes. 'Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

So I am to sit here and feed you information," Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. "And you're to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward." I fix him with a look. "I can be charming. I charmed you, didn't I?" He rolls his eyes. "Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth… is that it is alive…. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos…. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

Science, as I have argued, goes against common sense, and we also usually lack the necessary information on which to make a scientific judgement. But more importantly, our belief engine, programmed in our brains by our genes, operates on different principles. It prefers quick decisions, it is bad with numbers, loves representativeness, and sees patterns where often there is only randomness. It is too often influenced by authority, and it has a liking for mysticism.