During President Obama’s speech on Middle East policy, he spoke about the desire to see that people everywhere had access to the Internet as a way of obtaining information. To support his idea he said, “information is power.”
While I agree with his premise, it got me thinking about the current value of information.
Is there really power in information? Or, is information merely the fuel that drives thought?
With the Internet’s omnipresent nature, obtaining information is fairly easy (given that you are able to access the Internet). So, information itself is somewhat ubiquitous.
Universal availability would tend to reduce the effective power of something. If everyone has a piece of data (information, news, fact) it can hardy be considered powerful.
Question for you:
If we agree that information isn’t innately powerful, when does it become so?
Or, if information isn’t powerful, what adds value to the raw material?
What examples can you provide where information is impotent?
Information is powerful when new technology is introduced to management, employees and the public.
Adding value means filtering out possibly interesting, but less useful information, then translating the input into a form easily digested by end users.
My own experience is rife with “new” technologies in the motor vehicle industry. Introducing a vehicle computer scan-tool to motorcycle technicians was new to them but old to auto technicians.