professionals and the individuals concerned; business information, as in banking cards, which allow the personal electronic device to act as a payment broker. And then, we also find non-monetary value in the overall scheme of personal electronic device, as standards battle rage in every corner of that domain of activity, for the various industrial and governmental players to keep their influence and profits. Witness to that are the battlefields of operating systems specifications regarding the functioning of the devices, of governmental practices regarding which country will have less to do in terms of policy changes as the world goes from analog to digital, and in other areas like the format of payment messages and telecommunication operations. Finally, we need to mention that the personal electronic device core content is very controlled in terms of transferability, as much of it is either very private, like health information, or quite expensive to obtain and keep, like bank accounts. In most cases, transferability is in fact not only a matter of personal choice, but also a matter of law. In terms of the satisfaction of needs, personal electronic devices are located at every point of influence, a subject we will develop in Chapter 9.

Location, location, location

As we see, the economics of information is yet to be written in fullness. However, while our species’ pragmatic approach to survival has allowed us to use prose like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain, without even knowing it, computers couldn’t do that in the little time of their evolution. They had to be taught, and therefore the partitioning of digital content had to be made explicit for them. Only later, as we’ll discuss in subsequent chapters, would they take matter in their own hands, so to speak. For the moment, we need to expand on the very way digital content has been structured and positioned up to now in the computer world. Digital content is located everywhere in computer networks, with means of access in place to produce it, organized in ways that make it palatable, and with the structure of trust that makes it actionable.

Computer data can be found on all sorts of media, so we will concentrate on two attributes of such media for the purpose of our inquiry: duration and security. The media known longest to mankind are rocks and pots, lasting from thousands to tens of thousand of years. If we were to go for duration based on history, that’s probably the media we should chose. Various forms of vegetal products, including paper and tissue, would be next in the list, lasting sometimes up to a few thousand years. And when we reach what is generally considered as a long term medium for computer data, like tapes and diskettes, we already know from experience that they can’t last as long as the other inventions we mention. The maximal length of conservation of our computer data counts at best in decades. Now, if we consider lengths in years, our optical disks, hard disks, storage keys, and other flash products can probably do, if we don’t mind finding their format forgotten at some point, and having to call costly experts to the rescue. Finally, from microseconds to days, we are talking about transient data, data that will be erased, either on their way from a location to another, or as temporary information allowing some processing to occur. With each form of content, going from the decade to the year to the day, various means of security can be invoked; the first element to be considered is always the physical medium. The security mechanisms are the same as for any physical good, as far as storage media used for decades or years are concerned. For transient storage, circumstances differ, as data can be over the air in case of radio transmission, over or underground in case of wire transmission, in a component of a computer system, or in some part of a personal electronic device. During transmission, data have to be considered unsecured. While over the air snooping is quite easy, the snooping of wires is often more difficult. What’s certain is that it can be done, and it has been done often. There is no physical security for data during transmission, in almost all cases (quantum encryption is an exception). Alternative means of protection are needed. For example, in the case of computer

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