7/27/2019 Physical Resources Only Become Natural Resources When We Discover Some Way to Make Them Economically Useful

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Physical resources only become natural resources when we discover some way to make them economically useful. The worldpossessed vast reserves of oil for millions of years, but it sat useless in the ground as people had no better way to light, heat, andpower their homes and factories than to use candles, wood-burning stoves, and steam power. It has only been about 150 years

since humans discovered oils economic usefulness. When we consider resources in this light, it becomes clear that a naturalresource can include almost any existing material on Earth, so long as some way is found to use it to satisfy our material needsand desires. Energy is a resource critical to mans survival, comfort, and well-being; oil serves as a resource only because itis a form of energy.

Physical resources become economic resources when they are combined into more useful arrangements by human ingenuity and

workwhether that involves picking apples from a tree or mining the materials and producing the energy needed to build andrun a particle accelerator. In terms of resources then, we are limited only by the total amount of elements existing on Earth, fromits core to the stratosphere. Allowing for space travel, we are limited only by the sum of all the elements existing in the universe.

So, as long as people are concerned with their own well-being and free from arbitrary restraints on pursuing that well-being (forinstance: environmental regulations, severance taxes, and wildlife preserves), we will never run out of natural, economic

resources. The potential to discover new energy sources and new methods of production is not a matter of the capricious whim ofmother nature, but rather a function of mans reasoning mind, which has an unlimited potential to understand the world andmake new discoveries. As the economist Julian Simon put it, human beings themselves are the ultimate resource.

Physical resources are the man-made resources, such as buildings, technology, and products.

these are resources that are available to a business organisations in the form of buildings and other

machineries needed for the day to day running of the organistaion.

Information management (IM) is the collection and management ofinformationfrom one or more sources and thedistribution

of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information.Management means the organization of and control over the planning, structure and organisation, controlling, processing,evaluating and reporting of information activities in order to meet client objectives and to enable corporate functions in thedelivery of information.

Throughout the 1970s this was largely limited to files, file maintenance, and thelife cycle managementof paper-based files, other

media and records. With the proliferation ofinformation technologystarting in the 1970s, the job of information managementtook on a new light, and also began to include the field ofdata maintenance. No longer was information management a simple

job that could be performed by almost anyone. An understanding of the technology involved, and the theory behind it becamenecessary. As information storage shifted to electronic means, this became more and more difficult. By the late 1990s when

information was regularly disseminated across computer networks and by other electronic means, network managers, in a sense,became information managers. Those individuals found themselves tasked with increasingly complex tasks, hardware andsoftware. With the latest tools available, information management has become a powerful resource and a large expense for manyorganizations.

In short, information management entails organizing, retrieving, acquiring, securing and maintaining information. It is closelyrelated to and overlapping with the practice of data management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Lifecycle_Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Lifecycle_Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Lifecycle_Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_maintenancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_maintenancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_maintenancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_maintenancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Lifecycle_Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information