Information wants to be leaky
Plenty of thought, from William Gibson to Richard Stallman to Brad Cox has gone into two contradictory properties of information:
- Information can be valuable.
- Information wants to be free.
"Wants to be free" means that it tends to leak out, despite your best efforts. If it's a secret, it will be told. Even if you keep it secret, people might infer the information from your actions. If it's proprietary, it'll be copied. If it's protected, it will be cracked.
There's something a lot like thermodynamics going on here. Everything eventually collapses to waste heat. It's all about what work you can extract from the process while that's happening.
posted Tue 16 Dec 2003 in /software/freedom | link
Archives 2008: Apr Feb 2007: Jul May Feb Jan 2006: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun Jan 2005: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2004: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2003: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.