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JohN Perry Barlow
Meaning is the issue. If you couldn’t read English, this whole
book would obviously contain nothing as far as you were con-
cerned. Given that Cory is really cool and interesting, you might
be motivated to learn English so that you could read this book,
but even then it wouldn’t be a container so much as a conduit.
The real “container” would be a process of thought that began
when I compressed my notion of what is meant by the word “ink”
— which, when it comes to the substances that can be used to
make marks on paper, is rather more variable than you might
think — and would kind of end when you decompressed it in your
own mind as whatever you think it is.
I know this is getting a bit discursive, but I do have a point. Let
me just make it so we can move on.
I believe, as I’ve stated before, that information is simultane-
ously a relationship, an action, and an area of shared mind. What
it isn’t is a noun.
Information is not a thing. It isn’t an object. It isn’t something
that, when you sell it or have it stolen, ceases to remain in your
possession. It doesn’t have a market value that can be objectively
determined. It is not, for example, much like a 2004 Ducati ˆ mo-
torcycle, for which I’m presently in the market, and which seems
— despite variabilities based on, I must admit, informationally
based conditions like mileage and whether it’s been dropped — to
have a value that is pretty consistent among the specimens I can
find for sale on the Web.
Such economic clarity could not be established for anything
“in” this book, which you either obtained for free or for whatever
price the publisher eventually puts on it. If it’s a book you’re read-
ing from, then presumably Cory will get paid some percentage of
whatever you, or the person who gave it to you, paid for it.
But I won’t. I’m not getting paid to write this forward, neither
in royalties nor upfront. I am, however, getting some intangible
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