"Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants." If that sounds like a science fiction story then you haven't talked to Caleb Scharf, author of "The Ascent of Information: How Data Rules the World."
One of the most unique features of the human race is the vast amount of information we carry around. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data.
Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us.
Come 2040, Scharf notes, unless we find new ways to store all our tweets and videos (or come up with a new energy supply) we're going to be in trouble.
In the meantime, Scharf, whose previous books include The Zoomable Universe, The Copernicus Complex, and Gravity’s Engines, suggests that everyone recognize that we have a problem and that the problem is us.
"Information wants to grow," Scharf told Steve Tarter. "That's kind of terrifying but if we can understand that maybe we can do a better job of maintaining our civilization and not ruining the planet," he said.
People need to think about the world in a different way. For example: Do you really need to post a picture of your sandwich?
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