Information Availabliity Quotes

The advantage in today's society is that there is so much information about everything. It means that you don't have to repeat all the mistakes yourself but can learn by seeing how other people have done. ~ Peter Jumrukovski

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA's compliance record. ~ Barton Gellman

Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin. ~ William O. Douglas

Once biographical information contaminates your consciousness, it's impossible to erase it and look at someone's work the same way again. ~ Cass McCombs

I think there's a great deal of information you can convey with looks or silence. ~ Sean Bean

I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being processed. ~ John Brockman

I feel that many of the problems our society is plagued with come from having access to information that is too sacred, too sensitive to be transcribed, catalogued, analyzed, decoded and even used. ~ Anna Hammond

The audience requires not information but drama. ~ David Mamet

When I have too much information or too many choices, I often get confused.
•When one wants to encourage another to learn what "I know that you don't know," encourage them to engage in deep thought on a topic you suggest. Deep thought is a positive activity that doesn't blame and results in both a thinking process and outputs/outcomes that are positive. ~ Dennis Cogswell

The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media
movies, Telstar, flight
far surpassesany possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

It seems that nearly every week there is a problem where information is leaked or computers hacked. I'm conscious of keeping my details as safe as possible. I might be old but I'm still bright and prefer to go into my local branch and see a face. ~ Geoff Capes

I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject. ~ Chuck Close

Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions. When I first visited the homes of whites, I was often dumbfounded by the number and nature of questions that children asked of their parents-and their parents' unfailing willingness to answer them. In my household, questions were considered a nuisance; adults imparted information as they considered necessary. ~ Nelson Mandela

A guy gave me a job at an information booth - no questions asked. ~ Jay London

When you post something, when you text something, you lose ownership of it when you hit enter or send. Who you send it to, where you post it, they take ownership of that information whether you like it or not. ~ Mark Cuban

Real learning takes place when you use information for a purpose, not by trying to acquire it ahead of time. ~ Anonymous

Rules state information that is conditionally true of the situation of interest. ~ Anonymous

The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market. ~ Jacques Delors

The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message ~ Marshall McLuhan

There are only two types of waves that can travel across the universe bringing us information about things far away: electromagnetic waves (which include light, X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves…); and gravitational waves.
Electromagnetic waves consist of oscillating electric and magnetic forces that travel at light speed. When they impinge on charged particles, such as the electrons in a radio or TV antenna, they shake the particles back and forth, depositing in the particles the information the waves carry. That information can then be amplified and fed into a loudspeaker or on to a TV screen for humans to comprehend.
Gravitational waves, according to Einstein, consist of an oscillatory space warp: an oscillating stretch and squeeze of space. In 1972 Rainer (Rai) Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had invented a gravitational-wave detector, in which mirrors hanging inside the corner and ends of an L-shaped vacuum pipe are pushed apart along one leg of the L by the stretch of space, and pushed together along the other leg by the squeeze of space. Rai proposed using laser beams to measure the oscillating pattern of this stretch and squeeze. The laser light could extract a gravitational wave's information, and the signal could then be amplified and fed into a computer for human comprehension.
The study of the universe with electromagnetic telescopes (electromagnetic astronomy) was initiated by Galileo, when he built a small optical tele ~ Stephen Hawking

... the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth ... and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness. ~ Gore Vidal

I've gotten emails from people who purchased items from an infomercial, only to find out that the shipping was more expensive than the item itself. The lesson: If you truly want to order something you see on TV, go online to the product's website and see if you can find out more information. ~ Jean Chatzky

We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of
information science the most expensive asset is knowledge. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

All brains are good brains. However, information can affect the brain in ways that can distort its functioning. When negative information has taken over the natural workings of the brain, you could say that a good brain has become a bad brain. The brain naturally distinguishes positive information from negative, but sometimes we simply lose trust in our brain, allowing outside information to run the show. ~ Ilchi Lee

Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth. ~ David McCandless

learned that knowledge is power. If you want to control people's lives, limit their knowledge. That is why, throughout history, despots have burned books and exiled (and even killed) those with knowledge who threatened their power. Before the Civil War in America, it was against the law in many states to teach slaves to read and write. Knowledge is the most powerful force on earth. That is why the control of knowledge is essential to the control of power. The formula is: Information x Education = Knowledge Knowledge is power - and lack of knowledge is weakness. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Today, the defining skills of the previous era - the "left brain" capabilities that powered the Information Age - are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous - the "right-brain" qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning - increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders. ~ Daniel H. Pink

When we engage people positively, we create a receptive platform for the ideas and information we wish to communicate. ~ Bill Crawford

Someone once described the information business as exactly the opposite of sex. When it's good, it's still lousy. ~ Michael Bloomberg

I don't think we give that gift anymore (the gift of silence). I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise, rather than silence…how do we encourage reflection? Oh my, this is a noisy world. I get up every morning at least by 5AM. I have a couple hours of quiet time, reflect about what it is important. What can we do, to encourage people to have more quiet in their lives, more silence? Real revelation comes through silence. ~ Fred Rogers

Democracy is interactive ... It's a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication. ~ Dick Gephardt

Generation Y is much smarter. They just get information much more quickly. They really understand the idea of quality and value. ~ Jane Lauder

The part she hated most in mystery novels was where someone had a key piece of information but didn't tell anyone. That was always the precise moment that got conked on the head and thrown into a ditch. Obviously she had to tell someone, and quickly. ~ India Drummond

Creative people have an abiding curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn how and why things work. They take nothing for granted. They are interested in things around them and tend to stow away bits and pieces of information in their minds for the future use. And, they have a great ability to mobilize their thinking and experiences for use in solving a new problem. ~ William Redington Hewlett

The information that the Secret Service shared with the White House included hotel records and firsthand accounts - the same types of evidence the agency and military relied on to determine who in their ranks was involved. ~ Carol D. Leonnig

If consumers weren't thinking this way, companies would be a lot less responsive. Right now, consumers don't really have a way to get information about where exactly their clothing is coming from - that's a barrier. We have labels on your eggs, "cage-free hens." They need to get something along those lines to allow the consumer to discriminate. ~ Pietra Rivoli

You know in politics you are dealing in the realm of choices. You don't always have clear-cut decision between a thoroughly principled position and a thoroughly unprincipled one. You're making snap decisions with paucity of information, generally trying to do the best that you can, but you will make errors, and sometimes it's a decision between a bad and a worse alternative. It has to be done, because we need to order our society, and of politics it can literally be said: Bad job, but someone's got to do it. ~ Peter Costello

What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, revelation of the complex. ~ Edward Tufte

The rise of a ubiquitous Internet, along with 24-hour news channels has, in some sense, had the opposite effect from what many might have hoped such free and open access to information would have had. It has instead provided free and open access, without the traditional media filters, to a barrage of disinformation. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

If I want to spend the rest of my life reading one day's output of information, which is about what it would take, OK fine. But I personally prefer calibration from an aggregator or newspaper, where the No. 1 story is one they consider important, [and] they're usually right. ~ Harold Evans

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information. ~ Peter Drucker

I want to continue to strengthen Harvard's fabulous collections in old printed material, but at the same time, I want to help Harvard move into the world of digitized information. ~ Robert Darnton

In my experience victims are more concerned with helping their families understand that they are still connected to them. In some rare experiences information comes through that helps understand what happened. ~ John Edward

Codes and patterns are very different from each other," Langdon said. "And a lot of people confuse the two. In my field, it's crucial to understand their fundamental difference."
"That being?"
Langdon stopped walking and turned to her. "A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature - the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera."
"Okay. And codes?"
"Codes are special," Langdon said, his tone rising. "Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern - codes must transmit data and convey meaning. Examples of codes include written language, musical notation, mathematical equations, computer language, and even simple symbols like the crucifix. All of these examples can transmit meaning or information in a way that spiraling sunflowers cannot. ~ Dan Brown

Apple already had everyone's billing information from iTunes ... you could buy things just by typing in your password ... That, for the first time, brought very, very easy payment to the modern software world. That, more than anything, is why there is a business for paid apps. ~ Marco Arment