James Gleick has a big, beautiful brain.
It’s like a triple-decker cruise ship of mind-blowing philosophies that finds ports of call in areas such as the rise of technology and its tanned, bikini-clad sister, communication.
In his new book “The Information,” Gleick saves the most colossal party for the island known as data. In fact, he says the basis of the universe isn’t matter or energy—it’s data.
“Scientifically, information is a choice—a yes-or-no choice,” he recently told Wired. “In a broader sense, information is everything that informs our world—writing, painting, music, money.”
Heady stuff, this.
Gleick continued, “Information is the thing that we care most about. The more we understand the role information plays in our world, the more skillful citizens we will be.”
The author might add that we can become more skillful citizen-communicators, too. Marc Fisher, a Washington Post reporter, recently wondered about the roots of modern revolution. How does one begin? How do thousands of citizens in an oppressed society amass from nothing?
In a heart-wrenching piece, Fisher learns that some revolutions begin with data or a single, good story to exact change.
Indeed, the spark that started the recent revolutionary movement in Tunisia grew from a lone event in a downtown market in the town of Sidi Bouzid. A young vendor was sucker-punched by a female cop as she stole fruit from his stand. It happened all the time. Tensions simmered for years.
The vendor, humiliated and determined to make a statement about the plight of Tunisians against an aggressive government and its minions, doused himself in paint thinner and set himself on fire. He later died.
Social media took it from there—remember, it was a single, good story—and a firestorm of protest began in the streets.
Data underpins everything, and what makes data so different now is the rate of transfer.
The village is wired. And, to be sure, the villagers now own the tools of influence.
