Information dark matter
I started collecting a list of once “secret” documents that were, in one way or another, broadly released (whether it be through legal process, government disclosures, leaks, or the ideas themselves eventually turned into books): * The analysis done by Deutsche Bank investors to predict the 2008 financial crisis (dramatized as the Jenga scene from the movie “The Big Short”) * A consulting project completed by BCG for the city of Dallas on their loose dog problem * Deeply insightful tech emails surfaced through court cases written by people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc capturing some of their strategies, views, or ideas * The book, Bulletproof Problem Solving started as a professional development document within McKinsey and was eventually refined and published * MrBeast’s guide to content production * Netflix’s famous culture document, which Sheryl Sandberg has called one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley * Facebook’s little red book With all of these examples, we can see that significant human capital is funneled into fields like tech, finance, and consulting (or law, startups, VC, government/statecraft, etc), and it is therefore unsurprising that much of the work produced there is made to be valuable. In fact, it is very valuable, but it is largely inaccessible to external audiences. This also happens more broadly; in any human endeavor involving any intellectual effort at all. The takeaway is that there is an incomprehensible amount of amazing work being done that is nearly, or even completely, impossible for others to find. This is information dark matter. It’s out there, and now we know it’s out there, but it is not something we can go and meaningfully interact with. And while information created for internal company use is just one example, I began to consider where else we might find information dark matter and how we can make it accessible. Why is this important? It’s simple: with more