and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

I've been trying to think a lot about this whole information age thing lately which is perhaps fairly obvious given my recent rantings and less-than-thorough reporting of all things.. umm.. "newsworthy"? But the point of it is I thought those things I brought up or linked were newsworthy, but then again who am I to comment? I guess what I'm struggling with a lot lately is the question of importance, the question of what is real news. What, afterall, is really going to effect your life? Or, perhaps more close to home, what do you need to know today to be alive tomorrow.

Case in point; I was reading the metafilter discussion on Shuttle Launch Exhaust just now:

Ecological impact of Space Shuttle launch exhaust. Aluminum oxide powder, hydrogen chloride, and of course, water vapor, which can form noctilucent clouds. The environmental impact is supposedly minimal.

If you follow the link you'll see that most of the comments being posted on metafilter are, very predictably, of the "it's a drop in the bucket" category. By example:

This is statistical noise compared to the ecological damage that results from a dependancy on fossil fuels.

And indeed it is statistical noise. But this is neither here nor there.

What I am talking about here is the effect of the discussion, not the article itself. The Space Shuttle's ecological destruction is probably never going to touch me in any sort of real, measurable way. Sure, it may kill a bunny or two on the launch pad, a bird or an alligator even, but we're talking about local effects that are moot in any discussions involving the bigger picture (tm). So if it is moot, why was I exposed to it and, even more importantly, why did I continue to read comments after my brain had deduced the irrelevancy of the matter? These questions might seem like they come with obvious answers like "you were exposed because it was written about in florida today and someone posted a link on metafilter" but these aren't the answers I'm looking for.

So what is this about? It's about information and it's about who is getting it when, where, how, and mostly why. It's about information as a resource that is as real and as measurable as grain, rice, oil, or metal. It's about the way we handle this information when we do get it.

Institutions and corporations, as they become larger and larger, are often plagued with the problem of bureacracy, aka red tape, aka administration. These are all words that the common man see as derogatory and not just because they don't necessarily do their job but because these entities rarely, if ever, do it efficiently. The CEO gets the memo too late, or not at all. The President doesn't hear about the rising rebellion in time to fight it peacefully because a bureacrat decided he didn't need to know right away. These systems are information processing plants and also information filters. Data goes in one end and a very different set comes out the other end.

So the man on the street may not think he has this problem but he does. When he watches the nightly news he is getting the most filtered information possible - run through newswires, over editor's desks, across FCC approval desks, to finally rest under the nose of your favourite anchor. Does this sound like information to you or does it sound like a fairy tale that has been put together from half-truths, concocted from layers upon layers of data processing; a shit-nugget built from sirloin steak?

Earlier today I wasted 5 precious minutes of my time reading metafilter comments about how much pollution the space shuttle creates on launch and for what? This is not going to save my life or prevent me from making my next mistake, this is not going to make me money, so why did I read it?

So when the man on the street talks to his friend or reads through metafilter or watches tv or clicks to cnn.com or any other database of information, how does he know what is relavant? How does he know when to read, when to listen, and when to stop? Right now maybe this isn't a very important question but I'm telling you it will be. Maybe not for us, but at the very least for our children. Information is going to grow to a level that pertinent information will become so preciously scarce (if only because the amount of total information available will skyrocket) that the people who know how to find it will be the people controlling the world.

There is a reason that the likes of Google are making waves today and though some people may understand it and see it for what it is I don't think these people are enough to create this giant wave - it is the innate power of information itself that is creating this wave, the increased access to it, the increased amounts of it, the increased production of it. We are heading towards an economical society that won't be measured purely in physical product, it will be measured in the very creation of information. The inevitable procession of evolution.

The next big thing? The next big revelation we will see since the dawn of this age? Maybe it will be information becoming aware of itself? Afterall, what is man but millions of pieces of genetic data coming together to think, hear, see, feel that we exist?