Information

At some point we all have to consider why we do the things we do, why we pursue what we pursue. Especially when the world is so loud. When it all seems so futile. When the most harrowing of questions on our every exhalation, after "how's my breath?" is "why bother, what's the use?"

We are inundated. Hyper-saturated. In data, in algorithms, in content, in chatter. Posts and reposts. The partridge and the pear tree. In comments. In noise, both it's human generated and its more banal, AI created forms. One clown for every day of the month, for every Baskin-Robbins flavor, stuffed into a Citroen 2CV. Large numbers in close quarters, in tight corners, in dense groupings. Open the door once and you lose count of how many come tumbling out. Grease paint smiles and wild gestures. It'd be funny , impressive even, if it wasn't so overwhelming, so absurd, so impossible to cram them all back in. Why bother? What's the use?

The only thing we need less of is 'more'.

Information has never been more accessible, but never has it been more rare, never has it been more scarce.

Information isn't numeric, it's discernment. It isn't a quantity, it's cultivating. It's not a matter of abundance, or amassment, or speed. It's not the 328.77 million terabytes added everyday, the 120 zettabytes added every year.

Information is a method refuting madness. The signal in the noise. Measured steps within immeasurability. It's "careful selection", says Anthony Aguirre. It happens when someone deciphers something and points it out as interesting. Information is "the pointing to". It happens when we slow down. When we take our time.

We stack titled spines in shelf-sagging rows, in autobiographical arrangements. Ideas as varied as their colors, as different as their covers. Highlighters, and notes, and underlines. We think, we ponder, we muse. But why bother? What's the use? We read carefully because "some well crafted sentences about the right things are worth finding". We write. We create. We make things. Because somethings are interesting, and information, real information, is worth "pointing to".

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