# Trash, Treasure, and Wealth of the Post-Information Age By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-01-10 The amount of information generated daily far exceeds humanity's ability to read and comprehend. Most of the information is junk, or at least we think it is. I believe this is largely true. Just walk around a library, explore Wikipedia, or look at business filings on the SEC website. One will quickly find that most information is of little consequence or just plain pointless. There will be situations where that information may be critical to some, but could humanity survive without 95% of these special cases? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes. However, the byproduct of this excessive and uncurated information is endless technology companies that want to store it better (Cloud Services), discover insightful information faster (Search Engines), and synthesize it into something meaningful (AI). In many ways, the trash is transformed into treasure. The problem is how that treasure is dispersed and accessed. After all, humanity created this trash in a distributed manner, so one could argue that the treasure should be equivalently distributed. Those who created the technologies to transform the trash into treasure should be well compensated, but when do these individuals and organizations have enough? They would not exist without the trash, so the additional treasure should be returned to society. This kind of argument is not new. Many organizations and individuals have extracted more treasure from humanity than what might be considered reasonable. What is different this time is the nature of what is being extracted. One isn't taking pre-existing metals from the earth or leveraging fear to make a buck. These are finite resources that are not existentially universal. Instead, one is extracting information, ideas, and knowledge created by humanity that define our existence. It is limitless and created by everyone. Should one unjustly profit from this in excess? Can anyone show me a virtuous information technology company that uses our humanity to make a buck? Even the pointless and inconsequential is critical to our understanding of what it means to be human. The trash has value; thus, economic wealth should follow. #### Related Items [[Information]] [[Ideas]] [[Economics]] [[Capitalism]] [[Society]] [[Technology]] [[Organization]] [[Business]] [[Information]]