Who would have thought we’d forget how to manage information—in the information age?

When I first started working in Information Management, I was 17 years old, supporting a large mining company—and shortly after, a major engineering and construction firm. Back then, we didn’t have enterprise systems. We had filing cabinets, compactuses, microfilm (yes, really). We knew where every drawing was. We had master copies. We had registers. And when documents needed replacing, we physically tracked them down and ensured they were up to date.

We understood what a controlled document was—not as a checkbox, but as a discipline. We had strong numbering systems. We had clear processes. People respected the function of information. Because trust in that information was vital to how the business ran.

Then came computers. I was there for it—one of the early advocates. I helped build Clipper-based databases to track documentation. The theory was simple: computers would do the heavy lifting. We wouldn’t need as many people to manage information. It would just... happen.

But something ironic occurred. The better our software became, the worse we got at information management.

People stopped investing in the process. Fewer people understood how it worked. There was an unspoken belief that the system would take care of it. But systems don’t manage information—people do. And over time, the clarity, traceability, and structure that once defined information control began to fade.

We entered the information age. And somehow, we got worse at managing information.

Yes, there’s more of it now. Yes, the speed is greater. But that only makes discipline more important, not less.

What we need now isn’t nostalgia for filing cabinets. It’s a return to respect—for information, for structure, and for process. Information Intelligence isn’t just about software. It’s about design. It’s about discipline. It’s about asking: do we know what we’re looking at? Can we trust it? Can we find it again?

We don’t need to go backwards. But we can’t afford to keep going forward without a foundation.

The irony of the information age is that we’ve forgotten how to manage information.

It’s time we fixed that.