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Far too often when citizens seek records from our government, they are met with long delays, denials and difficulty. Federal agencies can routinely and repeatedly deny requests for information with near impunity. Making the situation worse, requesters have few alternatives to lawsuits to appeal an agency’s decision. John Cornyn
Information is not knowledge. Albert Einstein
We are the kind of animal that consumes information. It’s a language we move to wherever we go. Often unconsciously. But now information is starting to redefine our world. Its geography and its economy. Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, BBC 1993
Until now information has mostly moved around by phone. ibid.
In this world everything – literature, music, speech, even art – is so many dots and zeros of digitalised information. And the computer deals with it indiscriminately. ibid.
But how can you protect something that has no physical existence and can be copied or changed undetectable? ibid.
The camera can now lie. ibid.
Hawking’s revelation was that black holes instead of lasting for ever as everyone thought eventually disappear. Leaving no trace of anything. Including what Physics consider a fundamental part of reality: information .... Information can never be destroyed. Horizon: What is Reality? BBC 2011
Lenny [Susskind] realised that if black holes were like holograms, then there is only one place where their information can be stored: the Event Horizon. Which would mean it would never fall in, and it would never be destroyed. ibid.
The celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that if mini black holes exist then they must emit radiation, which has been called Hawking Radiation. It is believed that this radiation will cause a tiny black hole to evaporate, and potentially to disappear. Hawking gave mathematical evidence that showed that when a tiny black hole forms and then evaporates some of the information that went into the black hole never comes back out. This startling prediction caused a fire-storm amongst physicists. Because the laws of quantum theory insist that information can never be completely destroyed. The Universe s2e2: Cosmic Hole, History 2007
Every time a bit of information is erased, we know it doesn’t disappear. It goes out into the environment. It may be horribly scrambled and confused, but it never really gets lost. It’s just converted into a different form. Leonard Susskind
There is no absolute knowledge ... All information is imperfect. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 11/13: Knowledge or Certainty ***** BBC 1973
All knowledge, all information, between human beings can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. ibid.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it. Samuel Johnson
Today’s things are so inefficient. All this paper ... So I think information is very fundamental. Bill Gates, interview Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, BBC 1993
This is the information age. And the computer is the tool of the information age. ibid.
The number of bits to which we have access has grown dramatically. Computers can now store and process enormous amounts of information extremely rapidly. In our time a revolution has begun. A revolution perhaps as significant as the evolution of DNA and nervous systems and the invention of writing. Professor Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Cosmos: The Persistence of Memory, 1979
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
I only ask for information. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Miss Rosa Dartle
It turns out that people overwhelmingly are not that interested in communicating with information, people are interested in communicating with each other. Howard Rheingold, author The Virtual Community, interview Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, BBC 1993
The past years have been filled with revelations about private detectives and journalists illegal accessing personal information on celebrities. But there is also a lucrative black market in information about you and me. All your secrets are up for sale. Dispatches: Watching the Detectives, Channel 4 2012
The Data Protection Act 1998 is supposed to safeguard our personal information. ibid.
We put in a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions asking how many times their staff had been disciplined for data offences over the past year. Their response: 992 in just ten months. ibid.
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, Sherlock Holmes
Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship. Bruce Coville
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. Oscar Wilde
And a new philosophy emerged called quantum physics, which suggest that the individual’s function is to inform and be informed. You really exist only when you’re in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit. Timothy Leary, Chaos & Cyber Culture
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story. Gertrude Stein, Selected Operas and Plays
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information. Idries Shah, Reflections
Information overload is a symptom of our desire to not focus on what’s important. It is a choice. Brian Solis
We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today’s knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little. Mario Augusto Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis
We the people have no excuse for starry-eyed sycophantic group-think in the Information Age. Knowledge is but a fingertip away. Tiffany Madison
Perhaps this was the greatest genius of the cyber jihadis: the monopoly they clinched on information. They realized how helplessly addicted the population had become to knowing in this information age. So what if news was tainted or unreliable? – people needed their daily fix. Manil Suri, The City of Devi
The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. Mark Twain
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. Winston Churchill