Information and data
2007 information year writing
"In 2007, for the first time ever, more information was generated in one year than had been produced in the entire previous five thousand years - the period since the invention of writing."
-Jaap Bloem
seek information use
"Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use."
-Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
information answer question ask
"Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise."
― Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
information quantity relationship set structure
"Information is not a substance or concrete entity but rather a relationship between sets or ensembles of structured variety."
—Walter F. Buckley (1922-2006)
torture data confess
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
― Ronald H. Coase (1910-2013)
know millionth percent
"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
― Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)
information lost return read
"Information is not lost in black holes, but it is not returned in a useful way. It is like burning an encyclopaedia. Information is not lost, but it is very hard to read."
—Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
action unprofitable information sleep
"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep."
― Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
sherlock holmes mistake theorize data fact
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes
information is not knowledge
“Information is not knowledge.”
― Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
information tyranny dictatorship
“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”
― Bruce Coville
problem solve information arrange
“The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
freedom opinion expression seek receive information UN
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
information fanaticism cause cure
“In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.”
― Daniel C. Dennett
culture ocean information drowning ignorance
“What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.”
― Richard Paul Evans
the Net concentration contemplationonline
“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
― Nicholas Carr
information filter substance significance reliability complenes
“In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING. Filter the information: extract for knowledge.
Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance. These filters protect against advertising.
Filter third for reliability. This filter protects against politicians.
Filter fourth for completeness. This filter protects against the media.”
― Marc Stiegler
purpose collect information power
“The purpose of collecting so much information can only be power.”
― Nick Drake
information speed light meaning dark
“Information may travel at light speed, but meaning spreads at the speed of dark.”
― Richard Powers
information empty head
“Information is what you put in empty heads to keep them empty.”
― Marty Rubin (1930-1994)
private information source fortune
"Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune."
— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
stone age clever man crude tools information
"The stone age was marked by man's clever use of crude tools; the information age, to date, has been marked by man's crude use of clever tools."
— Anonymous
information age entertainment
"We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age."
— Tony Robbins
information answer questions not asked
Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don't even arise.
— Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
private information source fortune
"Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune."
— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
world bedouin tribe american prone misinformation gullible
"Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong."
— John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
action unprofitable information sleep
"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep."
— Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2008)
information currency democracy
"Information is the currency of democracy."
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
data banks more less exist
"The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist."
— Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
truth information knowledge
“It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.”
― Caleb Carr
many things wise man wish ignorant
“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
technology economic open-source insecurity self-doubt shame
“Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The internet has not just open-sourced information, it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame.”
― Mark Manson
school read write teacher metaphor information
"Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live."
— Peter Cochrane
irony information age credibility opinion
"The irony of the information age is that it lends credibility to uninformed opinion."
— Stephen Coonts
information age data know
"Welcome to the information age. Data, data, everywhere, but no one knows a thing."
— Roger Kimball
creative age agricultural industrial information
"I think we're heading into the Creative Age. We've passed through the Agricultural and then the Industrial and then the Information Age."
— Meredith Brooks
difficult truth information age channel obfuscating
"It's very difficult to get to the truth and ironically, in the Information Age, which we would have thought meant channels to the truth is in fact obfuscating the truth."
— David Irving
time wait web pages load plot productivitykeep away society
"I calculated the total time that humans have waited for web pages to load. It cancels out all the productivity gains of the information age. Sometimes I think the web is a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society."
— Scott Adams
privacy hide speech say surveillance
“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden