Quotes About Information

What we do with the information now is up to us, but certainly I have a lot of respect for the courage and integrity that was required for [Edard Snowden] to take that action.

I will exercise patience and will provide all facts to the general public.

Any person who has information can connect with any other person who wants it, and anyone who wants to make it mean something in some context, can do so.

Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development.

The removal of the physical constraints on effective information production has made human creativity and the economics of information itself the core structuring facts in the new networked information economy.

One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the "information good" that is the response to one's query is produced by the coordinate effects of the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations-both market and nonmarket, state-based and nonstate.

Why can fifty thousand volunteers successfully coauthor Wikipedia, the most serious online alternative to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then turn around and give it away for free?

They can create their own expressions, and they can seek out the information they need, with substantially less dependence on the commercial mass media of the twentieth century.

there is remarkably little support in economics for regulating information, knowledge, and cultural production through the tools of intellectual property law.

Facebook is at the forefront. It's the company that can fundamentally change the way information is being exchanged and processed. It can be the basis for artificial intelligence to develop over time.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.

In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.

At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset—their personal data—in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. It's a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets.

First, if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don't know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues.

Data religion now says that your every word and action is part of the great data flow, that the algorithms are constantly watching you and that they care about everything you do and feel. Most people like this very much. For true-believers, to be disconnected from the data flow risks losing the very meaning of life. What's the point of doing or experiencing anything if nobody knows about it, and if it doesn't contribute something to the global exchange of information?

In the twenty-first century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos. From

Since humans are individuals, it is difficult to connect them to one another and to make sure that they are all up to date.

the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.

data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset, and politics will be a struggle to control the flow of data.

Even if you don't know how to cash in on the data today, it is worth having it because it might hold the key to controlling and shaping life in the future.

within a mere two decades, billions of people have come to entrust the Google search algorithm with one of the most important tasks of all: searching for relevant and trustworthy information. We no longer search for information. Instead, we google

If you get your news for free, you might well be the product.

The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what's going on.