...Are just part of how crazy it's becoming

We want, and need, the free flow of information. To be able to govern ourselves requires it. To be able to apply knowledge where it is needed, when it is needed, we must have it. To be able to interact with the people we already care about, not to mention those we'd like to be closer to, we need it.

And yet we cannot afford to let it be free flowing. Anymore than most businesses can. Some things we have a right to keep secret. Some things that are now property are necessarily knowledge that must be kept secret if it is to retain the value the owner seeks to retain.

How can it be that we've let things get to the point where, after working hard, the rewards of that labor are simply left to be ones or zeros in memory chips here and there. Ones and zeros that are pilfered with relative impunity by those who know not only how to manipulate data, but manipulate us as well; taking advantage of our gregarious natures; our wanting to share and interact, and turn it against us.

And let me be clear here. This is not expressed as a dig to those who struggle mightily to keep various data systems as safe as is humanly possible. It would be a daunting task even if social hacking weren't so easy. No, what I mean to decry here is that we've allowed ourselves to remain with an economic operating system that has turned information into something both indispensable, but also something that has become the equivalent of gold. A system where money rules to begin with, and upon which we either eat or starve. Are sheltered or left to the streets. Are able to be healed or wither. All simply because we can't figure out no other way to work the creation, and distribution, of items, or services, that would satisfy those needs, or heal what ails us. An alternative where it wouldn't matter if most information got copied willy nilly, here and there. An alternative, in fact, where having it spread around more (always with some exceptions of course) and more would only be a benefit as it would help everyone know how to do, or accomplish, something important.

But that is where we are at, even as we wonder what will become of the idea of work, now that robots can do more of everything. In short, the contradictions are mounting and the weight of it all ever more burdensome. If ever there were a time to start thinking outside the coin box, now is it.