Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot, from "The Rock"
Those are big questions. In fact, they're ones I ask myself a lot. Maybe I'm expecting too much.
Back when I was striving to maintain my sanity in Silicon Valley, we made a distinction between different levels of "head stuff", for lack of a better word.
Most everyone started with data: bits of pieces of this and that, sometimes numbers (1, 0.5, pi) or letters (a, b, c, x) or facts of a sort (25 people answered question 1 correctly) or something that could be used as an attribute (red, large, miniscule), or maybe a date even (2016-06-04). We recognize things like that, but we can't do much with them. They're just there. They have no real meaning in and of themselves and we find ourselves trying to put them into some sort of context for without one you really didn't know what to do with what you have. Maybe that's why Mr. Eliot didn't even bother to mention it.
Collecting data and placing it in a context, however, made that data more substantial, and that's what we then called information. Collect data together in some kind of sensible chunk and you can do something with it. In the business world, folks liked (and probably still do like) to think that you can use information to make decisions (e.g., stock levels are below the minimum threshold ... hence, we need to order more.) I find that too limiting. I see the difference between data and information more in the meaning realm. The date 2001-09-11, for example, is just a date like any other. But when we say, "On 11 September 2001, the largest terrorist attack in the United States took place," we have some context and hence meaning and we can start thinking about it in some way.
Mr. Eliot was writing and wrote our lead-in quote, he even then he was pointing out that information was overwhelming knowledge. What would the poor man be thinking today, in our 24/7-online-wired-interneted world? We're no longer just overwhelmed, we're awash in information, we're drowning in information. You can find the right, wrong, reasonable and outrageous answer to any two-bit question you can think of. Smartphone, wifi, swipe, type and in a fraction of a second you've got it. I'm not sure we do much with those answers once we have them, and I'm not sure how much can be done with them. But I can relate to Mr. Eliot's sentiment: where's the knowledge?
Now, I certainly don't want to break open an epistemological debate here, but it doesn't hurt to ask ourselves, "Just what is knowledge? What are we talking about when we use the term? We saw how data differs from information (at least in one way), so what is the difference now between information and knowledge? Don't know? I'm not sure that I do either, but following the conceptual trajectory already established, it would seem to me that knowledge is more encompassing (broader, deeper, richer) than information. If we took the step from non-sense to sense so far, what's the next step toward knowledge? Well, for the sake of argument, I'd like to suggest it is significance, whereby we've not just moved up a level, we've changed dimensions. Always take heed when you change dimensions.
One way of looking at this next step is that data and information are, in a sense, quantitative. You can, for example, glue together some data and come up with information, but you can't just glue information together and come up with some knowledge. You can also separate data and information into classes or domains: this is an economics statistic, that's a rule of logic, this is a history fact, that is the second law of thermodynamics. We can memorize all these kinds of things and we can call them up when we think we need them. But even doing that: memorizing and recalling really doesn't add much value to anything; data and information are things you can have, in your head, say, but possessing data or information can never make you smart. At best, you'll be informed, but that's all.
Knowledge, on the other hand, feels more qualitative. Some stock-market indicator is rising, unemployment is falling, tax revenues are declining, poverty is increasing ... this is information that we encounter everyday, but what does it tell us? Getting the answer to that question isn't necessarily something you can google. Is there a (or perhaps even several) relationship(s) among these pieces of data and information? What kinds of relationships are they? How strong are they? How do they change over time? Have there ever been situations where the relationships among these data and information have been similar, and if so, what was it telling us then? How comparable are these situations? And these are just the first questions that come to mind, and none of them are easy to answer nor can they simply be googled. We may never be able to get a final, definitive answer to all of these questions at the same time, but we're changed somehow by trying to find them: the search, the reflection, the further questioning, the further searching all make us aware of something that might be useful in trying to address the issues that questions like that raise. I'd say that here we're in the realm of knowledge.
For one, we can only get at it by actively doing something (e.g., looking for connections, searching for additional information, drawing inferences, reorganizing the data and information, asking new questions, etc.) What is more, pursuing the answers takes both time and effort, you just can't look in your crystal ball (or Google) and find what you need. Even more importantly, you start to realize along the way that there may not be "an answer" to any of the questions, let alone all of them together. You do, however, start to get a feel for what kinds and how strong certain relationships are, and you recognize that there are many factors involved and that you find that relating things you're finding out to other experiences you've had and read and heard about may provide support for lines of thought you are having. In other words, what you "know" is constantly changing, it is dynamic. The data and information you acquire is always the same, but what you know certainly isn't.
Back in my Silicon-Valley days, we didn't talk a lot about knowledge. It was a messy notion, slippery, always just slightly beyond one's reach. It was much easier to just deal with data and information and identifying rules for manipulating them. Over time, a good number of people starting referring to that manipulation as "knowing" and sometimes even "knowledge" until it became just accepted practice that when you were talking about (mostly abstract) information and rules and principles, you simply used the word "knowledge". Before you knew it, there weren't many people who had any idea of what knowledge really is any more. And we're certainly deep in that place today.
Like a lot of you, I like to think that I keep myself well informed: I read, watch and listen a variety of news sources. I read a lot of articles and books from various fields and in many genres. (OK, perhaps I'm a bit of an exception in that I can read Adam Smith, Stephen Hawking and Kurt Vonnegut all in the same afternoon, but that's beside the point.) What I'm finding, however, and what's disturbing me is the fact that the more contemporary the material I'm engaging, the less knowledge (or knowledge-like notions) I'm finding. Oh, information en masse, practically buried alive in facts, figures, data and information, but damn little knowledge. I find that not only bothersome, but, to be honest, downright unsettling.
Knowledgeable writers (or presenters) are sharers. They not only let you know what they know, they let you follow how they got there, how they went from unknowing or puzzled to knowledgeable. You can follow the line of argumentation, get a peek behind the curtain of assumptions and presuppositions that otherwise would simply be taken for granted, glossed over, or ignored all together. You're shown the data and information, you're given reasons why certain questions were asked and not others, you're brought into the process, and you're given a feeling of inclusion. You never get the feeling you're being lectured, looked down on, or put in your place. You get the feeling your mind is being opened, that you are being stimulated to think along, reflect, consider and encouraged to inquire further on your own, should you so desire. They make the complex much less intimidating.
Oh, how different are how many (too often, self-proclaimed) experts (if writing) or pundits (if presenting). In your face from word one, focused (often claustrophobically so: I'm talking about unemployment, leave the stock market out of this), direct, unwavering, certain, dogmatic, a maximum of statements and a minimum of questions (other than rhetorical ones, of course), the only unknowing involved is in the heads of the readers/listeners), no revelations of givens and just-taken-for-granteds, no wishy-washy maybe's and what-if's, just here-it-is, this-is-how-things-are, and this-is-what-needs-to-be-done-about-it. No sharing, just telling; if you don't agree, you're obviously mentally or intellectually unfit for the task; you never have the feeling your mind is being opened, just filled, and many seem to revel in making the complex so complicated that it's downright intimidating.
(With the summer upon us and you, with perhaps a bit more time on your hands, may like to actually experience what I'm talking about. Try reading Graeber's Debt or Proudhon's What is Property? and Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom (and the order doesn't matter, by the way). Or try Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard. Or perhaps Wilson's Consilience and Thompson's Coming into Being.)
Unfortunately, I know as well that this is a situation that isn't going to change any time soon. I've been to and in enough educational institutions (of all levels) to realize that information processing is being massively pushed and that knowledge has been all but forgotten. Oh, I know there are exceptions -- there are always exceptions to the rules -- but these are too few, too far in-between and not in the "system". Mainstream education, both public and private, has bought into the information-rich-knowledge-poor paradigm. Look at the No-Child-Left-Behind-test-'em-till-they-drop or Common Core disasters in the US; look at the OECD favoritism for objective testing and academics over crafts and trades here in Europe; look at the overscheduled, over-requiremented box-ticking that passes as bachelor (and I would suspect the majority of) master-degree programs (i.e. "higher education"), more and more of which is being dictated by "industry" so they can get the graduates they claim to need.
We poor saps out here in society are the ones who will foot the bill and pay the price for this short-sightedness and by the time most of our highly schooled but hardly educated young people finally awaken to the realization that they're full of information but don't know a thing, it just may be too late to turn things around. Who's going to solve problems when there's no one left who can think?
And no, I never even got to wisdom ... I wouldn't know where to start. We live in a world, governed by a mind-set that is willing to destroy the environment to make more money, that is oblivious to have-nots and ever-fewer have's, that is incapable of distinguishing between price and value, that is thrilled by show, even when there's no where left to go. Where is the wisdom in that?
But, as Mr. Eliot so aptly pointed out, we're so busy just living (with the lack of wisdom, absence of knowledge, glut of information and data) that we've lost sight of Life.
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