It's information. We're domesticated apes who couldn't have done what we call civilization without first finding script - that gave us an immeasurable advantage over other animals. We have memory that outlasts death, we can educate our offspring... and ten thousand years later, we falter because we haven't either evolved any further, nor really learned anything (ecology is being exterminated in the service of economy, history keeps repeating itself - not what an 'intelligent' life form would do).

And you can see in the news how there's a great movement that adores the smartphne but sees information (vulgo free speech) as oppressive and would like to turn science into a tool that serves emotionality... add the adoration of fundamentalist Islam, which is only contradictory at surface level, and we're headed straight backwards, shrinking away from growing up.

It think it's an instinctive reaction - the human animal doesn't really want to become conscious, and what is happening with data and AI is what will carry us into the next evolutionary stage - if we can stand the pressure... this one of the more interesting prrojects :

https://cointelegraph.com/news/news-business-is-broken-but-blockchain-can-save-it