Norbert Wiener on the Exchange of Knowledge and Secrecy

To be alive is to participate in a continuous stream of influences from the outer world and acts on the outer world, in which we are merely the transitional stage. In the figurative sense, to be alive to what is happening in the world, means to participate in a continual development of knowledge and its unhampered exchange. In anything like a normal situation, it is both far more difficult and far more important for us to ensure that we have such an adequate knowledge than to ensure that some possible enemy does not have it.

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society