I spend a lot of time marveling at the way the internet has transformed our lives. Anything you want to find out about, no matter how mundane or arcane, is out there. Totally unregulated, yes. But for the most part, it serves as an information repository. Information is the daily bread of our lives and the internet is the most searchable storage site.
As Bill Moyers observed, "Bread is life. But, if you’re like me, you have a thousand and more times repeated the ordinary experience of eating bread without a thought for the process that brings it to your table. The reality is physical: I need this bread to live. But the reality is also social: I need others to provide the bread. I depend for bread on hundreds of people who I don’t know and will never meet. If they fail me, I go hungry. If I offer them nothing of value in exchange for their loaf, I betray them. The people who grow the wheat, process and store the grain and transport it from farm to city; who bake it, package it and market it- these people and I are bound together in an intricate reciprocal bargain. We exchange value."
Ideas and information are the metaphorical bread. This is today’s reciprocity.
