and other knowledge. At a later stage, we eventually specialize into some form of integrated knowledge, which defines our situation, responsibility, wealth, and fate in society. Yet, the intelligent acquisition and processing of information never ceases, whether in private or in professional life. It is a commonplace to say that we are controlled by information. From a materialistic viewpoint, the primary goal of life is to collect the information that is useful for various personal reasons, such as societal compliance, mind growth, satisfaction, self-image, empowerment, standard of living, or material survival. Fortunately, intelligence does act as an information filter. It is able to control the flow of information and to select what is relevant to any of the above needs. The rest represents "useless" information, like spam mail. Its fate is to vanish into oblivion. On the other hand, "useful" information is what intelligence looks after, with various degrees of expectation and priorities. The last notion of priority implies a personal investment to acquire and integrate information. If information must guide decisions and actions and, overall, future growth, this effort is of vital importance. The need to deploy effort in the 1 The word intelligence comes from the Latin inter-ligere, literally meaning "linking things together." 3.1 Making sense of information acquisition and integration of information is too often overlooked, because of the fallacy that one could get informed through the news media, or just by browsing the Internet from a cell phone. To get informed is not only to access raw information, but also to make sense of it; this is where the effort comes. Intelligence may be a gift, but it takes some effort to make intelligent use of information. As we all know, the principle of so-called computers is to process information, as reduced into data. 2 Computers perform this data processing at higher speeds and with larger amounts than the human brain can handle, which reflects a man-made form of higher 