The uses and shapes of information have vastly transformed during the past three decades. Information is no longer, as it once seemed, a social and cultural by-product of “real” wealth. In the electronic age it is a primary resource, a resource that creates jobs (or roles) for people, that appreciates corporate assets, and that significantly defines the function of government. This is hard to grasp so long as we continue to regard cybernation as the extension or improvement of earlier technologies. In point of fact, it is wholly different. With the advent of what may be called electrotechnics, information becomes a stuff, a thing in itself, an actual source of both production and consumption. (The computer is the first machine that consumes and produces the same material—information.) The proofs are universal. Communications is already an enormous industry. Each year, more and more people—including students, who perhaps should be paid for their services—are engaged in recording, sorting, and sending information. The federal government is already the single largest creator and processor of data in our economy. Observe in this light, then, the concept of information as a kind of property. It will not then appear as the limited concern of writers, composers, performers, and publishers. It will, instead, appear to touch upon practically every person and every enterprise—upon the wealth of nations.