Value of Information

I want to share with you a brief remark I heard from a wise man I very much respect. He said it much more elegantly, and I can only paraphrase:

When we humans discovered the value of time, debtors started to pay interests; as we grew wiser, we learned to appreciate the value of alternatives, and hence came along the futures market. We value information now. Whoever that maintains and processes the most accurate information is looking at long-term growth.

This is a good motivation speech on why we should always be curious, be interested, no matter where we are in life. It is also encouraging to those who bury in books and learn painstakingly how to do research and dig insights out of books, papers, archives…

I have been wondering though: what’s the next valuable thing? Any guesses?