As a new decade begins, I remember well the mantra that brought in the last one:
"Information Is Power"
So here we are, 10 years on, and thanks to the emergence and hyper-growth of the 'net in general, and of the Golden Children of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in specific,we're beseeched by information en masse...
Perhaps more information than we can handle.
Definitely more information that we NEED to handle.
Yeah, I see it and I get it: the Internet has democratized and exponentialized information. Be it the “official” or the crowdsourced variety, the information explosion now feeds me news 24/7, lets me keep tabs on friends I hardly know, and allows me to consult thousands of reviews on the next movie I want to see or the next cellphone I want to buy.
Taken in pairs or
dozens, these information clumps can help. Taken in droves, they
incapacitate, crippling me with the dreaded “paralysis by analysis” I
learned about in Don Tobin’s masterful college marketing class. Sorry dear,
we missed the movie start time...I was too preoccupied with reading what 477 people had to say about it.
As we move faster and are flooded with more info than ever, the concept of "information" itself is vastly overrated. There’s so much
of it out there that people don’t know what to do with it. Case in
point: the recent attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253
There was so much information on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—hard,
relevant, incriminating information that included a personal alarming
call from the man’s own father, for God’s sake!—that law authorities
could’ve literally written a book on him.
So, in the end…what good was all that information? Instead of using the info gathered to stifle Umar and render him anonymous, we are now cursed with yet even more information about him (i.e. "Poor guy just needed a friend."). And the beat goes on!
Information without context is merely noise. (Ironically, that’s
exactly how the guy who turned me on to Twitter two years ago
despairingly describes the service today. The novelty of the 140-word
broadcast fades fast when used for the inane and nonsensical.)
Yes, there’s a lot more chatter out there, but there a proportional increase in what's actually being said? I'd settle for half-proportional. As Harry Nilsson sang in Midnight Cowboy: “Everybody’s talking at me/I don’t hear a word they’re saying.” I sincerely believe a great new-school career exists for a special kind of editor, someone who can comb through all the clamor and make it sound more like music. Had the CIA had one last month, they’d be singing a different tune today.
So is information really power? Frankly, I think information can be misery. To borrow a phrase my kids moan when I tell them something particularly personally revealing, we’re inundated with “Too Much Information.” It is so abundant, so cheap that the cost of storing it in experiencing something of a reverse Moore’s Law.
And as the cost of storing information rapidly approaches zero (how much have you paid for an 8-Gig USB drive lately?), the capacity for capturing it will touch infinity. This “virtual immortality,” a term coined by Microsoft’s Gordon Bell (whose book Total Recall recounts his living experiment of documenting his every moment) will enable us to remember everything. Once everyone knows everything, forgetting something will transform itself from a nuisance to a luxury.
Paradoxically, as information loses its power, the lack of it is gaining luster and strength. Or, in simpler terms: “Ignorance is bliss.” The new decade will be kind to those brave explorers who choose to see the world through their eyes only, chart paths without the aid of GoogleMaps, and try to establish their own voices rather than listen to a cacophony of others’. Information is power? No more, my friends. The quantity over quality state of information reminds me of a great parallel, which we'll call "The Keychain Conundrum." Consider this--
Who is more powerful: The man with 100 keys clanging on his keychain? Or the man with only one?
So as we enter a new year, a new decade, it’s time for, as Alvin Toffler would put it, a Power Shift.
Information isn’t power, it’s raw material.
Conviction is power.
Belief is power.
Action is power.
Having personal values is power.
Making profit is power.
And thus, as a new year begins--more power to you.