Ruth Porter of Maxim has replied to my piece criticising their post I had argued in my reply "Blogging blurs the information lines?" that

• blogging is less significant than they proposed - the blog revolution is not on its own a revolution comparable to print!
  
• far from "information" being "most valuable commodity today" information alone is nearly worthless today
• in a digital environment the ability "to test everything and hold fast to what is good" (as 1 Thes 5:21 puts it) is vital

Ruth's reply in an email that I cannot quote (it specifies: "This e-mail and any attachment(s) contains information that is intended to be read only by the named recipient(s). It may contain information that is confidential, proprietary or the subject of legal privilege.") argues that imformation is valuable since profitable industries like the stock exchange and oil companies rely on information to remain profitable.

In reply I wrote:

Ruth,Thanks for the reply, I'd almost (after all this time) begun to think Maxim was not interested in discussion!

Even in the industries you mention it is not so much the information that is valuable as the knowledge of how and when to act on that information. Also the sort of case you cite depends on the information being scarce and under control. If all companies have access to the same information the information is of no value and only the knowledge or wisdom of when and how to act have value. Scarcity and control of information are precisely the areas where digitisation changes the information environment in which we operate!

Since I prefer to conduct such discussions in public I will post this reply (though not your message) to my blog - after all such public review is precisely one of the differences between the blog and old media!