The New Food Chain

There are many indications that our current power structure may be slowly changing from domination by military might and force, to more toward the realm of energy control. There may be energy wars along the way, but it is said by some that ultimately he who controls the energy controls the military and commerce. The theme of commerce superseding military power was elaborated on in the classical science fiction work by Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Trilogy (which actually turned into more than 3 books). But that was on a universe-wide basis. Perhaps at the time he didn't know how important energy would become on this planet.

Well, I think there is an additional new paradigm shift (I love using that phrase now, since I saw it so much before I cleared it in the dictionary) in the works. I believe that down the road Information may define a new higher level power structure.

First of all, I must admit I am an information slut. I love the fact that I can get on the web and find out about almost any subject known to man within a few seconds. The amount of information available is increasing exponentially, along with technology to extract it, store it, and communicate it. (see Singularity) The current estimate is that the amount of information available to members of our society is doubling every two years. This is so absurd that someone going to college for a 4 or 5 year degree may find that by the time he graduates that the data he studied in the first two years is obsolete.

But there is another problem, besides the rate of information growth. Anyone who has researched much on the web knows that there is a major problem often with the quality of the data. How can I put it. There is so much BS out there that it boggles the mind. Or, I might say, this is a BS Planet. Know matter what topic you choose there are always alternative views and data on it. Often quite contradictory. If you have ever researched very deeply into topics reported by the major network media, you know that they almost always have a spin and are not a reliable source for data. Of course bloggers, while sometimes more accurate, are just as susceptible to bias and inaccuracy. There are academic and government agencies online, but they often have an agenda and only report the data that they support. And on and on. Its a data quagmire out there. So it helps to have some tools, some knowledge in how to evaluate data. But that's not my main theme here.

I might point out that with wildly different views of the world from different people around the world that it becomes obvious that reality is what we believe it to be. Ask different people what is real and you are likely to get many totally different answers. But this is not my main theme either.

Somewhere along the line, there will be entities, most likely some business, that will set itself up to take in all the data available and sort and sift it for reliability and promote itself as the best purveyor of truth. This would mostly be rated on a statistical basis as a percentage likelihood of being true. But this business would make it their business to soak up, accumulate on some automated basis, all the data available and sort it out, again on an automated basis, and rank it for truthfulness. Of course a lot of this would be self-documenting in the form of video, audio, images and other media. They could also promote that the have all the knowledge known to mankind. How valuable would this be. Well, eventually I think they would come out on top of the food chain of power brokers. Like a super intelligence agency, with data for sale. If there was anything to be known, they would know it. The more data they got the more they could barter for data they didn't yet have. They would know all geological data about mineral deposits, all the secrets the politicians are hiding, all the data about military plans and programs, etc.

The only other contender I believe might challenge them is a bandwidth provider mogul. With the exploding amount of information available, 80% spam on email, exponentially growing use of the web for video and other rich media, bandwidth could become a real premium. Everyone can't have access to huge amounts of data and media if you can't move it around fast enough.

But my feeling is that Information will trump bandwidth. Especially, when you consider the point where the data is fed to computers that are much 'smarter' than humans and are capable of inventing new technology. I just hope I don't see the government create an Information Czar, or someone develop a Wizard of Oz religion where the data is available only through an Oracle. But, onward and upward. Chin up, bloke! I embrace the future.