Lots of Information

We read "The Information," by James Gleick for this week. The enormity of this book equals its content; from drum beats to Wikipedia, it covers the rise and transformation of information through the ages.

Like most readers, I like a good story. I wish Gleick would have sewn ideas together a bit more and told a story instead of presenting us with history lesson after history lesson. However, I bet the former was his intent. By writing and constructing it the way he did, he made his point: There's a lot to take in, to understand, and it's a complicated  journey from drum beat to byte.

An interesting question to ask after digesting this read is, "What are we going to do with all of this information?" I don't mean the book itself, though it is daunting and even dubbed "aspirational" by a New York Times reviewer. I mean with everything being in the cloud now, or at least on its way, what's next? Sure, we can catalog all that is for future generations, but then what? Will they continue to do the same? Will Wikipedia never end, having every page on every gas station archived for eternity? I envision a time when there's no cloud because everything is the cloud - TV, mail, all our personal records, banking transactions - all that stuff. I suppose all that information will still be stored then, too, but in a way I can't even fathom.

But that's the point of, "The Information" -- to show me that science and technology will answer my question for me. There will be a new theory, invention, or idea to come along and make me realize why all of the information is a good thing and show me what future generations can do with it.

I wish Gleick would have talked about the economic impact of all this information (perhaps it will be in the sequel?). It costs a lot of money (now) to store huge quantities of anything -- a reason cloud computing has become so popular. Granted, as technology progresses, so will the availability of it, but what does that mean for the moment? Or for countries who don't have the infrastructure to catalog their "right now" as tomorrow's history?

Maybe Wikipedia will catalog important things for those who can't type it right now. When it comes to that anyone-can-edit online encyclopedia, I'm an inclusionist (tho most of this post may make me sound like a deletionist). Let's write it all down and let technology catch up with us. Let's acknowledge we have too much information right now and see what the mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists of today and tomorrow can invent for the next big step.