“From the first living organisms to consciously-learning systems such as societies, information, organization, intelligence, and communication became ever more profoundly entwined and central to survival. As single-celled organisms evolved into multicellular organisms and eventually into herds of multicellular organisms, communication, i.e., circulating information among members, became essential to coordination and coherence in these increasingly vast wholes. Intelligence and communication eventually evolved into culture, language, and science because processing information and preserving lessons collectively vastly increases a group's chances of survival as well. Humanity is the cutting-edge of this evolutionary learning process on earth. We are a collaborative-learning species that thrives by pooling information, collectively forging new understandings, and changing our pattern of life by changing our best hypothesis about “how the world works” [63]. This ability has allowed us to adapt more rapidly and innovate more powerfully than any other earthly species. It is directly responsible for all the marvels we live with today. Yet, human learning too is never done. Despite humanity's adaptive talents, every pattern of civilization eventually reaches limits that force a choice: cling to old ways and decline or innovate and transform. Today's most crucial innovation may well involve learning to live and flourish within the limits.”
Circulation of information is as critical for the survival of our human system on the planet as it is for other systems like our body or the ecosystems we live in.
The problem is that in a lot of ways we hinder information from being shared to each other. Patents and intellectual property rights for example is an enclosure of information that threatens the survival of many, as patents of AIDS medicine show, and that hinders many of us to get technology, solar energy that would help us prosper.
Through history however we have prospered from shared knowledge from earlier patent-and-profit-motive-free inventions and discoveries ranging from the wheel and fire to the heliocentric view and language of mathematics and we can continue this lovely knowledge sharing tradition and avoid further systems destroying necrosis that decreases the health of our biosphere.
So let us stop the inequality of information and start sharing information better so that we collectively can learn how to prosper within the limits.