Information is not power
(between thing and being)

Elwin Tobing

When Alvin Toffler wrote his book Third Wave two decades ago describing and predicting the coming of the Information Age, some people shook their head expressing their disbelief. But today, it’s common to hear that information is power. If that were true, librarians would be rulers. And some say it’s not information, rather knowledge is power. If that were true, professors would rule the world. None of them happens so far.

The fact is, it’s not about information or knowledge as a commodity or product, rather who controls it. When control of information vanishes, information loses its power. It becomes just another commodity. The power comes from the ability to implement, to use information to make something happen. In other words, it’s not about what, but who. Or it’s not about good (thing), but human (being).

There is a growing concern everywhere, including in Indonesia, that computer literacy - people know how to use information technology - would be the main agenda of informal and formal education that needs to be achieved. In big cities, private agents have already offered informal courses and trainings on this subject since few years back. And the governments, especially in Indonesia, although to some extend are not able to provide hardware infrastructures for learning process of information technology, are challenged to subsidy some programs on this subject. The focus is on the technology and information.

However, this concern seems to be misguided. Bill Gates, after all, was not by any means the best at programming or engineering. But he knew how to turn others’ talents in this area into billions of dollars. He knew. As empiricism says, knowledge is from environment. That means there is a potential out there: an environment. And there is also a potential inside: brain, the being. Knowledge is not equal with the being.

When the governments or the authorities are worrying about how to increase literacy rate and computer literacy, they mostly talk about what and numbers. As many successful entrepreneurs have shown, these what and numbers, in many cases, are totally irrelevant. What more important is the environment.

Think about this. Usually when an Indonesian who just finished his study at a university in the US or any other Western country went home and started working, the first thing he complains is the environment. He suddenly found himself in an unproductive environment. His being becomes thing and his knowledge becomes irrelevant.

Many good idea becomes waste because of bad environment. Few years back, there was a plan to establish an online information and data facility that can connect potential importers and exporters from Indonesia. This facility of course would provide tremendous help to the small and medium businesses in Indonesia in cutting their costs of information. When the plan was brought and explained to the second main person in the department of trade and industry, he suddenly turned it down. To my surprise, the old and only computer in the office was not connected to the Internet. No wonder the talk on online facility was viewed as unnecessary even wasteful idea.

There are massive examples of bad environment in the country. When we talk about business environment, the problem would be very obvious from bribery, nepotism and you name it. When we talk about working environment, the problem perhaps is less obvious but people can feel that. One of the comments I received from readers, although it might not be true in most cases, is a complaint about foreign graduated workers. She complained that why they are paid more where in fact their productivities are low.

Environmental issue in this case is not only about physical environment. More importantly is the mental environment. The latter can only be changed or improved through education.

What about our education process? Has it been able to produce knowledge and or still focus on numbers? We somehow can’t expect too much from our government as the nation also has enormous problems that need to be taken care of. We are trying to be realistic. But at least the education process should be able to produce people that can change the environment.

Information is not power. Knowledge is not power, either. They are commodities. They are things. You can buy and trade them. But the real power is the being, the human. Unless our education program and the way of thinking of our society as whole still believe that information is power or capital is power, nothing much we can expect from education to change our bad environment.

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