Surely those of us who lived a good part of our lives in the twentieth century—in the era before the now widely accessible personal computers—will remember what our sources of information were when we needed to learn something specific, for example, in school or university studies. We had to turn to dictionaries or voluminous encyclopedias; to the printed books lying on the shelves at home, at best. Or, if not, we had to go to public libraries, which were very busy at the time, to gain access to the files there by reviewing their cardboard cards threaded onto a metal rod inside ad hoc drawers. We had to wait in line, most of the time. Then, with the information obtained from the file, we had to write a reference form and then hand it to the librarian, a very important figure, who would go in search of the requested book—as long as it was available—and deliver it to us, after waiting, sometimes for quite a while. Then came another exciting moment: checking, in the pages of the book we had just received, whether it was useful or not to gather the information we needed. Considerable time and effort were therefore required to obtain the desired information.

In light of the above, let’s apply the principle that what costs—time is money—is worth it. Information was very valuable, from that perspective, in bygone eras.

As we enter the first quarter of the 21st century, information seems increasingly easy to obtain, thanks to ubiquitous computer technology. It’s worth remembering, in this context, how economics addresses the phenomenon of the abundance of a certain good in the market and its ease of acquisition. It’s important to consider the so-called law of supply and demand. When there is an abundance of a good, its exchange value decreases.

Technology, as we may have realized, is ambivalent in its positive or detrimental effects on the authentic good, the object of everyone’s expectations. Therefore, we must be cautious regarding the seemingly splendid—and brilliant—results it has offered us, such as artificial intelligence, so recently; as well as social media and digitalized texts, among others; made possible thanks to the marvelous Internet, whose widespread use in our environment is now approaching thirty years old.

Let not such gleaming technological products—electronics—in constant renewal, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops, be just siren songs to us; they contain their ever-more ingenious resources. It may happen to some of us, as Homer wisely recounts in his Odyssey, in Book XII, when Ulysses—protagonist of the journey; a journey of life, after all—must cross the immense sea in his fragile ship, having to approach the sharp jetties where the dazzling sirens live. Being attracted by the seductive songs of such beauties would be fatal to reaching the destination of the champion of the Odyssey. Fortunately, the symbolic Circe warns Ulysses about the danger and advises him to protect himself. The ship of the Odyssey is saved from fatally running aground and continues onward.

As we read in the first words of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: all human beings naturally desire knowledge. Hence, logically, the relevance of information technology. However, we must be repeatedly warned that this noble desire can lead to toxic knowledge that, by awakening human weaknesses, is capable of causing addictions. Such as the disordered tendencies toward gambling—think of compulsive gambling—or toward ephemeral physical pleasure, which the senses can provide. Such as sight, hearing, and imagination. Certain interests that are awakened by the splendors of information technology are capable of diverting us from the path that leads us to authentic good. It is necessary to exercise prudence when interacting with the great power of information technology. To effectively consider them as just that: means. We must be wary of tacitly converting them into ends for ourselves. If they were to be chosen in this way—the means as ends—they would soon be unmasked, revealing all their limitations in the face of objectives that are capable of satisfying the deepest, most intimate ambitions of human beings.