The Wisdom Abyss

To a great extent, we all-so-clever modern may have sacrificed Knowledge on the altar of the jealous god of Profit. That's not exactly what I said in my post last week, but it was certainly in the back of my mind. Too many of us are too willing to do whatever it takes if the cash prize is big enough. It's a sad state of affairs, I know, but what do we expect? It's the easy way out. We love to value people based on the perceived size of their bank accounts. That old Puritan notion of wealth as a sign of God's Elect has never gone away. We simply swapped out gods in the meantime.

Let me just say this much about the "Elect" before I get to my actual concerns for today: it's always easier not having to earn what you have. I know, I know, the wealthy elitists today like us to think they work hard, but they don't. The vast majority of the fabulously wealthy inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. So when their lackeys and mouthpieces start moralizing about working hard and getting ahead, I can only sigh and get on with my life: they condemn themselves by their own mouths. No, I'm more concerned about why we've come to think these days that we can do without knowledge and why Wisdom is for all intents and purposes -- at least in public life -- reviled. Don't you find that odd? I do.

What I was alluding to toward the end of my post last week first struck me when I first came to Germany and realized what a big deal most Germans make of the distinction between "studying" (studieren) and "learning" (lernen). Most English-speakers use the words interchangeably, yet considering their differences can be an enlightening exercise. Americans have been so taken in by (and I'm guessing unconsciously revolted by) Pavlovian "operational" and Skinnerian "behavioral conditioning -- you know, getting dogs to salivate even though they won't be fed or getting rats to run mazes in ever shorter times -- that is, the whole system of positive and negative rewards for desired behavior) that they simply take this type of "learning" for granted. That's just how it's done. Gold stars, trophies, medals, ribbons, graduation stoles, certificates of achievement, special ceremonies and lots of cheers and applause are just a few of the tools of the conditioning trade. So, when we see little Emma or Noah in their rooms memorizing all the information their teachers are throwing at them so they can get good grades, we like to say they're studying, but they're not, they're learning.

The Germans, we should note, are just as short-sighted about all of this, even if it was their language that got me thinking about this. In common parlance a person learns as trade but goes off to university to study. If you look real hard at what's going on behind the scenes, you'll see that apprentices are learning, primarily through hands-on practice and endless repetitions of the same things. They are given specific tasks and jobs and they practice and practice getting it right till one day, at least here in Germany, the folks from the Chambers of Trade and Industry show up and watch them do them so they can get their journeyman's certificates. If you look at the average college student these days, they spend a lot of time memorizing (these days, Powerpoint slides or clearly defined algorithms, etc.) so that come exam time, they "get it right".

There was a time when things were quite different at university. One of the most readable and insightful accounts of how it was "back then" (and here we're talking about the early years of the 20th century), can be found in R.G. Collingwood's delightfully entertaining An Autobiography. Eventually going to take a degree in Ancient History and Philosophy, he found himself in his first few terms having to find some topic in Ancient Greek literature that would be worth exploring and then working up papers on that topic (based on original sources, it was understood) that he would have to present in person to his tutor. The book reveals the travails of a bright, young man trying to find his way in his new world, on the one hand, but it also reveals how a university-degree program was organized in those days: the student spent a lot of time figuring out what s/he wanted to know, and had to spend even more time trying to figure out to find, process, and assimilate what s/he needed to gain that knowledge. When I hear the word "studying" (in whichever language or conjugated form) that's what's going on in my head.

Two things are particularly worth noting here: first, there were a lot of basics needed for Mr. Collingwood to be able to go about his work (he had learned Greek in secondary school obviously) and this no doubt entailed a lot of rote work, practice, and memorization), but, in contrast to what we too often find today, those activities were part of the overall educational process, not its end; and second, while Mr. Collingwood was doing most of his work in his head, studying, in the sense presented here, is certainly not restricted solely to abstract or purely intellectual pursuits.

If you've ever encountered a master craftsperson, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are cabinetmakers, just to name one trade, who can make furniture that can bring tears to your eyes: the aesthetics of the design, the interplay of light, shades and hues in the finishing, the sensuous feel of a particular combination of textures, the precision of the joining and assembly, all let you know that here is a person who "knows" wood and "knows" what s/he's doing.

What student Collingwood was doing in his head, our master cabinetmaker was doing with her hands. And end product is conceived, the required conditions analyzed, appropriate methods, techniques and procedures were identified, and the knowledge of appropriate resources and tools were applied when and however necessary to reach the desired end. What these two examples have further in common, we should note, is that though each already "knows" a lot going in, at every step along the way they are gaining knowledge, improving and refining skills (perhaps even acquiring new ones) and gaining in experience and becoming more competent at what they "do". They're certain not merely acquiring information. Put perhaps a bit more metaphorically, their hearts -- not just their heads and hands, if you will -- are in what they are doing. There's one helluva lot of emotion involved. They are passionate about what they do. Just how many of our young people today have a passion for school?

It was the Enlightenment that raised Reason to the non plus ultra of human existence. Even the short-lived counteraction of the Romantics (Goethe, Beethoven, Delacroix, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, etc.) couldn't stem the rise to dominance of reason. By suppressing all that even smacked of "feeling" or emotion, the Industrial Revolution (and all its consequent ravages and destruction) was made possible. We were made to feel as gods but without all that effeminate claptrap about "others" and "values" and such. We were masters of our fates and the progress brought on by technology would cause a tide of prosperity that would lift all boats ... or so the reasoning goes. Unfortunately, although many strides have been made, the reality hobbles along pitifully behind the vision. The reasons for this of course, is that we let our subjectivity and our feelings get in the way. Yes, we've got all the information we need to make a better world, but we can't somehow. What could possibly be wrong?

Young Collingwood and our competent cabinetmaker, as we have seen, add a healthy portion of passion to their work. The work primarily for the thrill of the chase, for the increase of knowledge that comes from their doing, for the satisfaction you get when you know you've done something well. They know as well that at the end of the day, there is no amount of money that would (or could) compensate them for what they have actually put into their projects. They work for something that money, for example, can never compensate. The knowledge they have and gain is literally and truly priceless.

It's the feelings, the passion that drives them to do a "good" job, for what is "good" is not determined by something or someone external to the process, it is an intimate and essential part of it. That standard of "good" will vary from scholar to scholar, craftsperson to craftsperson, but they will recognize the "goodness" of the other nevertheless. They speak similar languages of knowledge and skill, not necessarily the same cultural language. They recognize their peers by their fruits, not by their words alone.

What our examples do writ large is accomplished by untold individuals in all walks of life, each in his or her own way. Maybe its the hobby gardener next door, the shade-tree mechanic down the street, or the alto in the local barbershop quartet or the hobby cook whose zucchini casseroles should be featured on TV. There is more knowledge "out there" than the current state of the world would have us believe, but it is too often overlooked, if not simply ignored, because you really can't make a lot of money from knowledge. (Some people do, no doubt about it, but they don't do what they do for the money, that's for sure, and I'd be willing to bet a considerable sum of money that they'd be the first to tell which lucky break (not their own hard work) that got them the money-making opportunity. In the end, exceptions always confirm the rules.)

That dimension of feeling and passion, that longing for "good" overflow both easily and readily into everyday life. A fundamental notion of "good" easily changes and develops into notions of what is right and proper and what is not. Before you know it, we find it is the knowledgeable or are reflecting morally while the informed go about business as usual. The link between knowledge and wisdom is most likely just as strong as the one we saw between data and information. This is certainly not to say that you can only get to wisdom via knowledge, but that there's been a good healthy dose of feelings, emotions, and experience involved.

In the end, it would seem that the old, oft-neglected, if not forgotten, adage is true after all: our feelings tell us what to think. You can combine, categorize, reorganize and shift, sift, sort and shake data and information without having to suffer the "irrationality" of emotions, and this is why computers are the ultimate information-processors. Whether anything good or bad, worthwhile or worthless, or beneficial or harmless comes of it ... well, that's only something a knowledgeable person might know. A wise person, of course, would know for sure. There are not objective criteria for any of those pairs. There's more than a mere cost-benefit analysis or risk-reward calculation or an arbitrarily determined utilitarian output involved.

If a bridge across the abyss is to be built, it would seem that knowledge has to build it.

Between Mr. Eliot's "Rock" and a hard place

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.

You may find out anyway

Not knowing or not wanting to know ... looking life in the eye or burying one's head in the sand. These are commonly accepted options. Unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it -- these aren't as clear-cut as they once were. Oh sure, there is no shortage of indivduals who would love to just close their eyes and make it all go away, and not being able to do that, they tune into their favorite propaganda/news channel and simply see and hear what they want to anyway. As we saw last time, we do it in regard to the past, so why not also in the here-and-now. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this approach is getting less effective each and every day. You're probably going to find out what's going on anyway.

It's getting harder and harder to keep a secret, have you noticed? President 29 (Harding) fathers a child in the broom closet of the White House and writes heavy-breather letters to his mistress and who knows about it? President 35 (Kennedy) turns out to be quite the ladies' man and when did we find out about it? Sooner than we found out about Harding. President 42 (Clinton) gets frisky in the Oval Office and the torches and pitchforks are out because we know about it while he's still in office.

We suspected for years that "Big Brother" was watching us, and the reaction the Manning and Snowden revelations unleashed was so strong because no one had wanted to believe that it was as all-pervasive and detailed as it is. This particular issue is complicated by the fact that Americans -- not exclusively, but in particular -- are not so sensitive about such things when they are happening to others (What's the big deal about tapping Merkel's cell?) but are overly sensitive when they are affected themselves (What do you mean they're listening to my phone calls?).

The point is that everything, sooner or later, gets out, becomes known, is revealed. The Internet never forgets. Sure, technology has made all this more possible, but it's not the only reason that we get access to more than we sometimes want to know and it becomes increasingly difficult to keep anything to oneself.

The flip side of this is, of course, that there in an increasing amount of information we're not allowed to keep to ourselves. Apply for a mortgage or any significant loan. Get yourself a passport. Gee, get on an airplane and have yourself scanned. For Americans, who are most often content telling a commercial enterprise anything they want to know but get freaked when we find out it's the government, this may all seem normal. But, for Germans, just as one example, the notion of the "glass citizen" (der gläserne Bürger) is somewhere between disconcerting and downright frightening. By contrast, they may be willing to tell the government more, but they get very, very uneasy when this information gets into private hands. And rightfully so. However, the ability to restrict the divulging of information, the capability to protect one's personal, private sphere, is becoming ever more difficult.

I know, I know ... all of you are perfectly honorable, responsible, and open individuals who have absolutely nothing to hide. That may well be, but that's not the point. The downside is that not everyone who has access to you will treat you as such. The more of us that's "out there" is all the more over which we have little influence and absolutely no control. At what point does our publicly available self become "more real" than our own private person?

This is not only something to think about, it is something you need to think very deeply about. And, if nothing else, it is something that we certainly need to become more aware of.

IT envy

The promotion of data to information and the reduction of knowledge to information have farther-reaching consequences that we may want to admit. This is particularly true when we link it to our obsessive compulsion with "having", with owning, with property. Remembering Mr. Eliot, we can say that wisdom is a priceless pearl, knowledge an expensive luxury, but information … well, that's a commodity that can be bought and sold just like any other. IPR shouldn't stand for "intellectual property rights", it should stand for "information property rights", for in so many cases that is all we're really dealing with.

Our current motto "s/he who dies with the most information wins" loses its whimsical nature. It used to be (at least in Francis Bacon's day) that knowledge was power, today information is power. Ergo, whoever has the most and can process it the fastest, turn it around and fire it back the quickest, who can generate and accumulate the most is the winner (read: the best, the smartest, the most powerful …). And what can do just that? Of course, the computer. And so we raise the machine to our ideal, we yield to its unerring accuracy, its lightening swift sifting, sorting, and filtering, we pay homage to its power. Yes, in a sense, we begin to worship it for it's godlike power.

You think I'm exaggerating? You should think again. This might be how I observe things, but I'm certainly not the only one to have noticed.

Günther Anders, the contemporary German philosopher has gone so far as to argue that we have in fact become ashamed of our humanity, of being born; we'd wish deep down, in our heart of hearts that we could be made like our computers. The first time I read this, I was taken aback, I'll admit, but if you take the thought seriously, Mr. Anders is onto something. Have you ever heard the argument that a given course of action is the best, because someone had "crunched" the numbers and that's what came out. In that moment, we don't even think of questioning the outcome: they're numbers, the computer said so, who are we to argue? Money never sleeps, electronic trading never tires nor errs, businesses are bought and sold, hundreds of millions of lives are affected, both directly and indirectly, business deals are automated all without ever being touched by human hands. One of our secret-most desires to is simply get those fickle humans out of the equation. Whenever they get involved, let's face it, they just screw things up.

We place way too much faith in digital technology, in information processing. The information-processing model of mind is the dominant theory these days, but it couldn't be farther from reality. It might seem like a mere metaphor to describe an exceedingly complex phenomenon. But we've gone beyond the metaphor and now mistake it for the reality. That's the dangerous step, but it's one we should perhaps think about taking a step back on.

Reference
Anders, G. (2009) Die Antiquiertheit der Menschen I, 3rd edn, Munich, Beck.

The man behind the curtain

The "information" gadget non plus ultra is the computer. Don't we just love our computers. It doesn't matter what size, shape, color or speed, we love them. They're everywhere, too. Our traffic is controlled by computers, they help us fly and land planes, they control much of our driving ability, they collect data against terrorists (or innocent people, it doesn't matter, as long as they are collecting data), they get us to the moon, Mars or Jupiter, they guide our missiles, they give us our passports and they send us notices from the finance authorities. They are simply everywhere. We can't work without them anymore. In fact, we can't live without them anymore: from copy machines, to (not-so) smart phones, to laptops, notebooks, and desktops, they are an intimate part of all our lives. We can't get enough of them and we have no idea what they do to us. We think we know what they do for us, but it's a lot less "for" than "to".

Still, I just love the words we use to describe them: fast, powerful, smart, and – my personal favorite – sexy. They're machines. They're things. OK, Steve Jobs and Apple tried to make them accessories and furniture, but they didn't quite succeed. Computers have receded into the nethermost corners of our lives, and these are the most nefarious, because we take them for granted. But the ones we "have to have", that we flash around, are accorded a reverence that they may not deserve. What's so special about them anyway?

They sit on our desks and stare us down workday in and workday out. They spit out reams of tables and figures that we don't have the time to double-check so we take them as correct. They give us access to others because we hardly get out at all anymore. They get us things (downloads), make our lives convenient (just ask Amazon), and control every move we make, every thought we think, and every moment we'd like to rest. That's not what I call "special". But, in spite of it all they can get more bits to more places faster and more reliable that has ever been possible before. And, it is this simple illusion that makes us think that "we are making real cultural progress – and the that the essence of that progress is information technology". (Roszak, 1986, p. 29)

So, is that progress? Is this what we understand progress to be? It is becoming ever more difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Is that what we want? Have we ever stopped to ask ourselves how substantial all this information technology is? I don't really want to believe that progress is an illusion, but when we stop to take a look, things may not be as real as we would like to believe. Simply pay not attention to the man behind the curtain.

Reference
Roszak, T. (1988) The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking, London, Paladin Graftin Books.

Roszak and Eliot

If you have never read Theodore Roszak's The Cult of Information, you don't know what you're missing. It should actually be mandatory reading for anyone who thinks they have something to say about technology or the so-called information age. Of course, to get anything out of it, you'd have to approach it with an open mind, so if you're unwary of technology or downright obsessed with it, it would be better you just let it go. I don't contend that everything the man says is right, but I would argue that what he has to say is worth thinking about. William James once remarked that what most people call thinking is simply a rearranging of their prejudices, and I can't say much has changed since he said it. But, if you are willing to earnestly consider a clearly stated position on a well-defined subject, I would say the time spent with the book would be more than worth the effort.

There was a time – and not all that long ago – when a distinction was made between some very similar things. For example, data was just whatever it was, a date, a color, a statement, a fact. Information was something "more": it was data that was used to make a decision, or at least contributed to the making of a decision. Knowledge was something "more" than information; it was something one knew, what could be used to act in an informed way, to exercise a skill or provide an argument. Finally, at the top, we had wisdom ... well, who even knows that that is any more? This isn't a new phenomenon, I'm afraid. In 1934, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote (in The Rock):

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?

He knew where we were headed ... and what do you know? We're finally there. We no longer talk about data at all, and everything else ... and I mean everything else ... has been simply turned into information.

If the motto of the 80s was "whoever dies with the most toys wins", the motto today is "whoever dies with the most information wins". Though I would say that whoever dies, dies. It doesn't really matter what they have when they do.

Let's face it, we love information: from baseball statistics to football scores, to monthly rainfall measurements, to the mileage we get with our cars, to stock-market prices and indices, to interest rates, to the most common boy's name of 1913, to the number of jobs not created since the latest tax cuts. It doesn't matter what it's about, as long as it's what we think is information, we love it.

In this regard, the title of Roszak's book is not all that far off. We've made information and the acquisition of information a kind of cult. And as is the case with every cult, it needs it priests, and there is no shortage of them either. We call them "experts" these days.

What's it worth?

Recently I was kicking around some ideas with my daughter who is working on her literature dissertation on the 'lost generation'. One of the topics we were wrestling with was what does or does not belong to the field of literary inquiry or literary scholarship. A day or so later I found myself trying to help my nephew with an assignment from his undergraduate micro-economics course and was vainly coming to terms with the real purpose of the exercise. It was after this that I realized that in both cases, the actual subject of the discussion was the same: what does it mean?

Meaning is one of those words that is some people use too much and others too rarely. For some, it is an ambiguous, not-very-helpful category. For others it is the central issue in their lives. That's quite a range to cover, that's for sure, and is so often the case, the truth most likely lies somewhere in-between.

One point that came up in the literature discussion is that the discipline itself is not really concerned with whether the world is a better place or whether we, as individuals, are any smarter as a result of our pursuing it. Why an author writes something -- so the theory goes -- is irrelevant. All we have is the text in its historical context and we have to deal with what we find. The only meaning worth anything is the textual meaning, that is, the meaning we find in the words as they are strung together in that particular place at that particular time, and perhaps under those particular conditions. It is, let us say, a rather focused view of meaning.

In the economics discussion, it became clear that my nephew isn't studying business and economics so that the world will become a better place. In fact, it became clear to me that the search for and discovery of the so-called 'laws' of economic activity do not concern themselves for any given state of the world. We only have the slope of a given curve, that occurs at a particular place at a particular time, and under a certain set of conditions. The question of meaning ... what does that mean? ... is never even asked.

The philosopher Günther Anders once noted, ""Human beings are ashamed to have been born instead of made." It would seem that literary theorists and economists are ashamed to be only scholars, not scientists. The analogy is not as far-fetched as one might think. Science, in the sense of counting, measuring, and standardizing, but also in the sense of discovering, researching, and studying has become the non plus ultra of intellectual striving. Only what can be counted counts, is the watchword of the day. We find this approach at the heart of most academic disciplines these days, from astrophysics to accounting (whereby I am still having trouble conceiving of accounting as an academic discipline, but that's another story). The human and social sciences have made themselves no exception. They wanted to be sciences, too. The English language, however, keeps them out, for we have taken the word 'science' from its original meaning in Latin and made it into something that it isn't: a way of life. Science, as a term, derives from the Latin sciro, 'I know'. Yes, we've turned a way of knowing into a way of life. The only problem is, what do we know any more?

What we know ... and if you don't believe me, just ask those bright young guys who own Google ... is merely information. We have tons and tons of information, but do we have any knowledge? I can't help but think of Eliot's "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?/Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" (from The Rock, 1934) T.S. was onto something there. (Well, actually, he was on to much, much more, for the line preceding those two is "Where is the Life we have lost in living?", and that puts it all into a much more existential context, but that, too, is a matter for another time). Information is just information. May 8 is just May 8, no more, no less. Even May 8, 1945 is just another day that slipped by in history unless I know (and here is where we come closer to the issue) that it was on that particular day that Germany surrendered ending World War II in Europe. It's still not knowledge, it's just a fact, but it is a piece of knowledge when we use it to make clear to another that terror and fascism of one type was bid halt by its successor. We need to think about what we mean when we use the term 'knowledge'. After all, it is more than just information, it is information in service of a purpose greater than itself.

That terror and fascism were bid halt is obviously a good thing. The part of that sentence about its successor will make some readers uneasy. And that's the very reason that it was added. This isn't a test, don't get me wrong, but while most of us agree on the first part of the statement, there are more than just a few who would accept the second part. Why is that? To me, it is clear: because it expresses a value that some folks may or may not agree is truly a value. The implication in the sentence is that that which followed wasn't all that much better than what came before. How could I possibly compare democracy with fascism? Well, I'm not really. When we consider that fascism is a type of economic organization, then its successor, that is, the system which we chose to replace it was either communism in the East bloc or capitalism in the West. The fact that those eastern economies called themselves democratic this or that has nothing to do with ignorance on their part, rather ignorance on ours, in the West. Democracy can be defined in any number of ways. There is no one, accepted, valid definition of what the term may mean. There are variations on the others (fascism, capitalism and communism), to be sure, but the span of variation is much smaller.

My point is that it is only now that we find ourselves in the sphere of 'knowledge'. Up until now, everything was just information, and it was all stuff that is more or less 'who cares'. The Soviet Union was communist. The United States was capitalist. The fascists had been defeated so we imposed our respective form of economic organization upon the losers (capitalism in West Germany, and communism in East Germany). That is as far as information gets us. The real question is, however, what difference does it make. In reality, not very much at all. For what we have are merely facts. Pure, simple, objective, indisputable, non-arguable facts. When we move to the next level, if you will, to knowledge, we start entering the realm of meaning, the realm where subtle, but important differences are important. Some think communism was a good thing. Some think capitalism is the best thing. In both cases, however, it is a value (judgment) that we have placed upon the fact that makes all the difference. In other words, when it comes to knowledge, values matter.

And here we have the rub. Knowledge is never value-free. Facts are. Knowledge isn't. What makes the difference is the values we associate with what we know. And that brings us full circle to science once again. Science and our modern worldview would like us to think that things are just the way they are, but for all the objectivity that science would like to impose (and other disciplines would like to embrace) in the end, it just isn't there, for science's own view of its non-valueness is, at bottom, just another value. We can't escape values. That things should have not meaning other than their own description is a value. Not wanting to deal with the messiness and fuzziness that values bring with them is something science would like to avoid. It doesn't like it, it avoids it, it thinks it just complicates things ... there are so many ways to describe it ... but in the end, they are just values.

Science, in its desire to free itself of values has really only driven out the Devil with Beelzebub. Their view of the world has brought us a heap of information. There's no question about that at all. But it cannot be the final arbiter of things, for to say it should or it shouldn't requires that one have values. To determine what is preferable or not preferable, what we desire or what we abhor, what is good or what is bad requires us to have values. Describing the world in such an objective way is perhaps value-free, but in the end, it is really just of no value at all: it is worthless.