Information... In General

This is a strange concept to me - but has been ever prevalent in society for a long time. I am sure even before modern times, people sold information for money. It isn't like this is anything new. Everything from gossip to education to ideas, we sell them all. We package them up in some form of wrapping and market it out. Sell it. Once it becomes more widely known, the product inevitably loses value... sometimes. Other times it's advice and direction, something we'd consider timeless, but you never know how much it's actually going to work for you, because we all need something different. Heck, we even sell our opinions as entertainment, coating it with precious media soaked goodness to make it funny, appealing, or "fit the mood." We have talk shows that make celebrities. We have seminars, guest speakers, companies that give information, translate information, and maybe teach information in a digestible format.

Information - anything that is simply thoughts or knowledge. That's really all it is, yet it's such a product. Now we don't actually consider anything I mentioned above a product, yet it's actually information wrapped in something else.

Honestly I'll tell you where this thought came from; I had this once as I worked for a company that came in to simply talk about culture differences between two countries. If you go to their website, these folks get paid a ton of money to go around to companies, make slide shows, and present info. Technically you could say that the info isn't the product - your paying for the presentation and slide shows. But... like... why?

It then occurred to me, that pretty much everything in life is built off of information to begin with. An engineer can't exactly use his talent or technical capabilities without information. A doctor can't diagnose a patient without information. I could go on, but you get the idea; when you work backwards, information is the backbone of it all.

Then you have to ask the question though... why does everyone's information seem subjective? I can answer that for you; we all have different conclusions based on our perspective. Let's say 4 people get into a car crash (no one gets hurt in any of the crashes). Then, they witness a 5th car crash... now at it's core, the information the brain received was that it witnessed a vehicle get into a crash. Here's where it gets interesting. You go and interview those 4 people and ask "what was your first thought seeing the car crash?" and get 4 different responses -

• Oh my gosh, I hope everyone is okay!
• Man at least their car wasn't very expensive
• I feel bad for them, they're going to have to deal with insurance
• It wasn't really that bad of a crash thankfully

We spend so much of our lives simply trying to understand and process information around us. It is just kind of wild to think about.

Then you go deeper into places where information is the core of it all. Let's say motivational speakers. They are looking to deliver information in a way that affects you and motivates you. Talk shows, where folks talk about their opinion, sometimes to sway you, but sometimes to consolidate information. The news is just information delivery on a screen.

But now let's go deeper... what does your mind do with that information? Here's the fun part; information doesn't come single mailed with a stamp. Oh no, information comes like a bulldozer, and it's happening every single second of your life from the time you were born. You come out of the womb, barely able to see in front of you. Your body is uncontrolled, and you have to learn to move your body. You see something, you want it, you have to use that information to help process body movement. As a toddler, you'll see your parents do things, and you'll take in that information and try and replicate it. As a teenager you start getting into art, and you start paying attention to placement, colors, and all of that is just information being processed in different ways.

The mind interprets that information. We have the whole psychology field dedicated to the study of this, helping you understand how to process information in ways that don't harm or cause you to be miserable. There are also certain conditions that may influence the way you process information - such as ADHD, and certain types of ADHD have no freaking clue how to process priority and importance, so the info comes much more raw to those folks. Other times, there may be fear associated with something because the information you received at one point in time was associated negatively, and now your brain intakes the information and processes it, then induces fear to keep you safe. Sometimes the mind is so fascinated with something, let's say a music artist, that they feel like their entire identity revolves around it.

Out of the weeds for a second; there is also factual and fictional information. Someone can tell you a story about a unicorn. They don't exist. It's completely fabricated, but you somehow connect to the story because you relate to how the unicorn feels. You read a good horror story. You watch a TV show made to look real, but it isn't. Then you hear about a local town who's got a gas station that got robbed. There's camera footage of the robber, and you can see what he's wearing, what he said, his physical attributes. Those are fact. If you drop a book on the ground, you know that you dropped it, that's a fact. Unless you're lying, which is giving false information.

Anyway I could go on and on. This was just a thought dump. Have a great day!