Marcus Cake

In popular terms, Moore’s law doubles the performance or halves the cost of information technologies every 18 months. Moore’s law has been working patiently for 40 years. In an information economy, this should have had a dramatic effect. However, political, industrial and social structures largely remain the same. Advances in technology have not changed the fundamentally way that our society or economy has operated. The right information in the right place at the right time will transform the world. This transformation will only start now. This article will discuss why such a process should only begin now and what role information is likely to have.

Maturity of complementary technology
There are four different types of information - text, data, sound and images. Information can be managed in four ways - capture, process, transmit and store. Moore’s law has been diligently reducing the cost of managing the four types of information to practically zero. Why zero? A hacker could assemble an application on his desktop, drag and drop it onto rented computers and service a global audience at nominal cost in a short time frame. Entire industries could be serviced by a one computer on a single strand of optical fibre. The cost of individual transactions in information based economies is (materially) zero. There are more articles on Moore’s law and other advances in technology in the technology category.

Open source
The open source software phenomenon has served two purposes. One practical and one ideological. From a practical perspective, it has delivered the software tools to every individual’s desktop that allow them to change the world. Secondly, they have demonstrated that the profit motive is not necessary to foster innovation or build large information engineering tasks. The individual’s desire to contribute and an online network to channel their energies can deliver quality innovation to advance economic development. Additional articles on open source are listed in the Open source category.

Global usage of information technology
The use of information technology by mainstream society has reached critical mass. Handheld devices and laptops empower each individual will the ability to manage information. Open source provides the tools. The internet provides global reach and a critical mass of people are connected to the internet. Approximately, one billion people are connected to the internet. A greater sense of global community is emerging and a desire to connect the other six billion. It is expected Moore’s law will continue for another 20-30 years. The potential of technology has not been reached. It is only now, however, that a critical mass of technologies have reached a tipping point where they can be applied to introduce new structures and business models to advance economic development (See The next four stages of online networks - from tools and solutions to new structures and economic development).

Information wants to be free
“Information wants to be free” is a phrase that is more than 30 years old. Wikipedia provides a brief history of how this phrase has had different meanings over time.

Wikipedia - extract:

“Information wants to be free” is an expression that has come to be the unofficial motto of the free content movement.

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.^[1]

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. … That tension will not go away.^[1]

The various forms of the original statement are ambiguous: the slogan can be used to argue the benefits of either propertised information, or liberated/free/open information, or of both. It can be taken merely as an expression of an amoral fact of information-science: once information has passed to a new location outside of the source’s control there is no way of ensuring it is not propagated further, and therefore will naturally tend towards a state where that information is widely distributed.

In 1990, Richard Stallman put a normative spin on Brand’s slogan:

I believe that all generally useful information should be free. By ‘free’ I am not referring to price, but rather to the freedom to copy the information and to adapt it to one’s own uses… When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving.

What role will information serve?
Proprietary information to is no longer necessary to encourage innovation or investment in distribution networks. Advances in information technology give every individual the opportunity to participate, prosper and contribute to online networks. A desire to contribute will see many take this opportunity. The community wants to evolve from proprietary information to systems based on community knowledge. The creative commons type licenses will become common.

Information wants to be free to advance the individual, economic development and the community. If the information has a value, it will find a way to reach others. The phenomenon of online social networks is based upon the distribution of personal, some would say, irrelevant information. But that information must have meaning and value for many. While most information sharing is legal, the desire to share information can be greater than the obligation to comply with national laws. The sharing of copyright music is an example. The phenomenon of online industry networks will be different. Shared concerns by individuals in every country may inspire political networks. The community desire for online networks is increasing dramatically for a variety of reasons.

Online networks created by social and business entrepreneurs will emerge to satisfy this demand. They will connect individuals in an unprecedented way in all facets of our society. However, they may meet significant resistance and the potential of online networks may be restricted. The battle between economic development and geostrategy will influence whether online networks reach their potential. Only time will reveal the outcomes.