STREET DOGS

From John Perry Barlow at Edge.org:

The big error with information has been mistaking the container for the content. When we started turning information into a product [after] Gutenberg, it was easy to think that the product was the book; dealing with it like other manufactured goods. In terms of distribution, there wasn’t a useful distinction to be made between books and toasters.

We’re still focused on this idea that information is a product, a property, a thing.

We have failed to recognise that information occurs fluidly and interactively and exists only in that sense. Trying to own information in the standard property model doesn’t work. Property is something that can be taken from you. If I own a horse and you steal it, I can’t ride it anymore and its value has been lost to me.

But if I have an idea and you steal it, not only do I still have the same idea, but the fact that two people now have that idea makes it intrinsically more valuable. It has gained in value by virtue of your stealing it.

The fundamental aspect of an information economy is its ability to fight entropy and to increase in value and complexity.

Data differs from information. You can gather infinite sets of data with machines, but in order to convert data into information, a human mind has to process that data set and find it meaningful.

That’s the important difference between information and other kinds of products.

Products of the physical world are generally themselves, regardless of their context. A toaster is a toaster. In the informational world, however, information draws value from its relevance.

This is an aspect of the information economy that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around, because they’re so used to having everything reduced to the common physical level.