For the Easter Holidays some parents buy a rabbit as a pet for their children. As the rabbit also can be helpful in keeping the lawn trimmed, a superabundance of grass can be reduced by rabbits. Cautious parents acquire one rabbit, incautious parents sometimes acquire a pair. Scarce Factors in the Information System Historically, information has been a scarce factor in the decision-making process. We have often had to make our decisions in the absence of knowledge about some of the most critical conditions that would subsequently determine outcomes.
Information is precious.
Information is not the Scarce Factor. What I mean is that we were provided with large quantities of information which we could sift and filter to find the relevant nuggets, but which we could surely not absorb in its totality. Human Time and Attention is the Scarce Factor. What has become scarce is the time of human beings, your time and my time, to process that information. While the means of acquiring information have been expanding, there has been no expansion in the number of waking hours in the day available for attending to that information.