Information is the life blood of an increasingly transparent world. The information-transparency cycle (I-T Cycle) is self-regulating, self-funded, and answers to no superior power. The I-T Cycle has become the most important, cybernetic (or closed loop, self-regulating) system in the history of the world. Thus, at the risk of mixing metaphors, technology has simultaneously, created an entire new landscape and become “ seeing eye dog” for those who demand to know where we’ve been and where we’re going, but are unable to navigate the massive landscape alone. INFORMATION
The Information-Transparency Cycle is simultaneously an organization, an economy, and a way of life. It is both the fuel and the major mechanism of modern life. It operates independently and is answerable to no authority; but most important, it is unstoppable. In the global Information-Technology Cycle:
1. Information is instantly collected on almost every subject or activity. 2. Information is easily compiled, probed, analyzed, scrutinized, jittered, refined, prioritized, studied, stored, and manipulated. 3. Information is directly and cheaply distributed to individuals or organizations globally. 4. Reaction is immediate to what is there-or what is missing. 5. More information is demanded, no more information is collected. The global Information-Transparency Cycle is critically dependent on the ever-decreasing cost of information technology, or what authors McInerney and White, in Future Wealth, refer to as the “ free fall in the cost of information”.
The Transparency Imperative
Today, information is a commodity; it is cheap and abundant, but rather than satisfying the world’s veracious information appetite, it simulates a hunger for more and more and more in fact, the demand for information has become insatiable. The fuel that drives the I-T Cycle is an endless supply of near free information. The L-T Cycle, in the endless information gathering, manipulating, storing, disseminating, archiving, retrieving, and then staring over with more and deeper gathering has created the new Transparency Imperative. Transparency: Power to the People
Technology has empowered both decision makers and consumers with a wealth of information that would have been unheard of just a decade ago. For consumers, shopping around is no longer need to entail lots of driving time or phone calls; shoppers simply click and read. Charities are ranked on the percentage of donor money going for overhead. In all these cases, as well as those involving reports on government leaders or institutions, the information is available for all to see and is archived for future reference. Transparency has put power in the hands of the stakeholders and consumers. It has changed the producer-consumer paradigm forever.
