Prayer of an information gal

Communication theory tells me that people cannot hear the word ‘no’. So when I say ‘I don’t want to be rich’, what I am actually saying is: I want to be rich. Then why is it that feels so beside the truth? Where does my resistance come from? Could it be simply frustration because I don’t make enough money or is there something else?

In today’s world money is the measure for acknowledgement. Whatever other result, the amount of money you make tells how successful you are. The simple lump sum of money is easy to communicate and will therefore travel fast, sharing your successfulness with a large audience.

But money is tainted. We know it is the measure for success and this impairs our vision. A great way to illustrate this is the story of a former colleague who increased his hourly rate by 100% after changing employers. Asking for a lot more money, he now got access to the people higher up and they followed his advice. They believed in the power of money. When unable to judge the advice on its merits, they looked at the price. To them his hourly rate was the indication of how good he was. Yet he was still the same person as before. Giving the exact same advice as before, when exactly the same people would not follow it, would not even take the time listen to him. 

Is this all bad? I don’t think so. It is just another way of getting a grip on subjects you do not understand. It is perfectly acceptable that you cannot understand all, so you need a strategy for making your decisions. And that strategy might as well be money. But it is not my way. I want to be acknowledged for what I do, for what I deliver. Not for how much money I ask or how much money I earn. I want to be successful. In that sense I want to be rich.

So I need the Information Age to arrive. An age where information is valued as if it were money. I need this because that’s what I am good at: I understand information. I can help you do your job while in the mean time effortlessly creating information that by others is valued as if you wrote it for them personally. I know how to organize the flow of information so you can share your information with whomever can make more value out of it. And who will all in return value you for delivering it. I know how to structure information, so it can be reused many times, multiplying the opportunities of you getting valued for your information. I know how to find out who needs what information. And I know how information will achieve your goals for you.

In the Information Age I will be rich beyond imagination. May it arrive soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 20:40 and is filed under information age, information value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.